On Sunday evening, a NASA satellite is expected to return to Earth.
The 5,400-pound (2,450 kilograms) Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) will crash back to its home planet on Sunday, according to the US military. NASA officials said that the time was either plus or minus 17 hours.
"NASA expects most of the satellite to burn up as it travels through the atmosphere, but some components are expected to survive the re-entry," officials wrote in an update. The risk of harm is very low.
Kessler Syndrome and the space debris issue are related.
The Earth Radiation Budget Experiment was launched in 1984 aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
Three scientific instruments were used to study how the planet absorbs and emits solar energy. It was supposed to operate for two years, but kept going until 2005, when it became a large piece of space junk. The spaceship has been pulled down gradually.
ERBS' death dive will follow some other, more dramatic space- junk falls.
The Chinese Long March 5B rocket cores fell back to Earth without warning. The crashes happened after the rockets helped launch new modules to the space station.
The first stages of other rockets are steered to a controlled destruction just after liftoff, or come down for a safe landing. The Long March 5B falls have been criticized by a wide range of people in the space community.
ERBS has been aloft for almost forty years. As more and more satellites go up, the threat of space junk is going to get worse.
A book about the search for alien life was written by Mike Wall. You can follow him on the social networking site. We encourage you to follow us on social media:
All Rights Reserved © 2024
