An old NASA satellite is about to fall from the sky this weekend
NASA has announced that an out-of-service 38-year-old satellite is about to fall from the sky this weekend. NASA said Friday that the chance of debris hitting anyone is very low, and most of the 2,450-kilogram satellite will burn up on re-entry. But some pieces are expected to remain intact.
The space agency estimated the odds of injury from falling debris at 1 in 9,400. The California-based space agency is preparing for the satellite's fall on Monday morning, along a path that passes over Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the westernmost regions of North and South America.
The satellite is expected to go down Sunday night, in 17 hours. However, Aerospace Corp., whose satellite, known as ERBS, was launched in 1984 aboard the space shuttle Challenger, is expected to drop. Although his life expectancy was two years, he continued to make ozone and other atmospheric measurements until he stopped working in 2005.
It is also reported that the "ERBS" satellite received a special farewell from Challenger, as the first American astronaut, Sally Ride, launched the satellite into orbit using the robot arm of the shuttle, and in the same mission also the American astronaut Kathryn Sullivan performed her first spacewalk. An American woman, and this was the first time that two female astronauts had flown in space together. This was Ride's second and final spaceflight, who passed away in 2012.
Source: websites