Everyone, please be careful. A 600-pound decommissioned satellite is scheduled to drop from orbit on Wednesday. Most of it is expected to burn up on re-entry, but “some components are expected to survive,” according to NASA. Don’t worry; the odds of putting yourself in danger are estimated to be about 1 in 2,467, so you probably don’t need to seek shelter.
Around space agency announcement, the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI), is scheduled to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere at around 9:30 PM EDT on April 19, taking about 16 hours. First launched into low earth orbit in 2002, RHESSI was tasked with observing solar flares and coronal mass ejections through the X-rays and gamma rays emitted by the Sun. The data collected by RHESSI helped scientists better understand the physics of events and how they were created. According to NASA, such flares regularly release energy equivalent to billions of megatons of TNT “within minutes.” Here on Earth, these blasts frequently disrupt power grids and systems around the world.
“RHESSI made discoveries unrelated to flares, such as improving measurements of the shape of the Sun, and that the Earth’s gamma-ray flashes (bursts of gamma rays emitted from high in the Earth’s atmosphere on top of thunderstorms) were previously has shown that it is more common than previously thought,” NASA wrote in its announcement.
[Related: The FCC is finally pulling the reins on space junk.]
During its 16-year tenure on the ground, RHESSI recorded over 100,000 X-ray events, but was eventually decommissioned in 2018 due to increasing communication failures. For the past five years, RHESSI has quietly orbited the Earth. Estimated 30,000 fellow pieces of rubble.As space dot com Also, as noted on Monday, the impending atmospheric re-entry has once again highlighted the growing space junk problem above everyone’s heads. RHESSI’s return is being planned and closely monitored, but larger issues are gaining increasing attention, especially after the undirected re-entry of his 23-ton rocket wreckage in China in 2021. . Run towards the International Space Station. The ISS crew was forced into a temporary lockdown, but neither they nor the space station were injured.
Now there are some suggestions for organizing the crowded skies. shooting net drag debris back to Earth, Small clawed satellite robot Helps clean up the clutter.Last week, the Federal Communications Commission officially launched The space agency had a variety of responsibilities, including the disposal of orbital debris. in the statement, new station director Julie Carney explains: space safety. ”
