NASA’s dead satellite will crash into Earth this weekend
A missing NASA satellite is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere Sunday evening (Jan. 8).
The US military predicts that the 5,400-pound (2,450-kilogram land The Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) will crash back into its home planet Sunday around 6:40 p.m. EST (2340 GMT), roughly 17 hours, NASA officials said.
“NASA expects most of the satellite to burn up as it travels through the atmosphere, but some components are expected to survive re-entry,” agency officials said. he wrote in an update (opens in a new tab) on Friday evening (January 6). “The risk of harm to anyone on Earth is very low: about 1 in 9,400.”
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ERBS, part of NASA’s three-satellite mission, was launched into low Earth orbit aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1984.
ERBS used three scientific instruments to study how our planet absorbs and radiates solar energy. It was designed to operate for only two years, but continued to operate until 2005, after which it became a large piece of space junk. Drag has been slowly pulling the spaceship ever since.
ERBS’s fatal plunge will come after other more dramatic space falls.
In 2022, for example, two Chinese Long March 5B rocket cores weighing approximately 23 tons (21 metric tons) fell to Earth out of control. Those accidents occurred in July and November, respectively, in each case about a week after the rockets helped launch new modules in China. Tiangong Space Station.
The first stages of other orbital rockets are headed for controlled destruction right after liftoff or come down for a safe landing and future reuse (in the case of SpaceX enhancers). So the falls of the Long March 5B have criticisms made from wide swaths of the space community.
ERBS is a different case, of course; it has been at the top for almost four decades. Still, the upcoming spacecraft crash is a reminder that Earth’s orbit is populated by a lot of space junk, which poses an ever-increasing threat as more and more satellites are built.
Mike Wall is the author of “Over there (opens in a new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in a new tab). follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) or on Facebook (opens in a new tab).
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