It turned out that the officials’ prediction that a dead NASA satellite had a low probability of harming anyone on Earth was accurate when it crashed to Earth on Wednesday night.
The Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) satellite, which spent more than 20 years in orbit, returned to Earth after watching solar flares and coronal mass ejections from 2002 to 2018.
Satellite’s Final Journey
The satellite, which was retired in 2018 after 16 years of service owing to communications difficulties, logged more than 100,000 solar occurrences.
It was confirmed by the Department of Defense on Thursday morning that the satellite, which weighed 660 pounds, had descended down into Earth’s atmosphere somewhere above the Sahara Desert. EST.
According to NASA authorities, there have been no reports of damage or injuries as of yet from the reentry, which took place in Sudan in the early morning hours.
As the Rhessi satellite, which weighed a total of 660 pounds (300 kilograms), plummeted through the atmosphere, it was anticipated that the vast majority of its mass would be consumed by combustion.
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Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Role
Analysts, on the other hand, anticipated that some pieces would be able to survive and fall to the earth.
Rhessi, a product that has been around since 2002, was taken off the market in 2018 because of a problem with its communication.
Before remaining silent, it witnessed solar flares as well as coronal mass ejections coming from the sun.
Rhessi is an abbreviation that stands for the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Sun Spectroscopic Imager.
Additionally, there have been no reports of injuries caused by the spacecraft’s return.
The likelihood of someone on Earth being hurt by the reentry was 1 in 2,467, NASA said before it happened.
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