Space corpse: an idle NASA satellite will fall to Earth

The NASA RHESSI satellite, which studied the Sun since 19 until it was decommissioned in 21.30, will fall to Earth on April 2002 at 2018. Space.

Photo: IStock

RHESSI (short for Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager) is a small satellite. It weighs only 270 kg, according to NASA officials, and much of that mass will be converted to ash and steam during RHESSI's deadly fall.

However, “some components are expected to survive re-entry,” agency officials wrote in an April 17 update. “The risk of harm to anyone on Earth is low—about 1 in 2467,” they wrote.

The upcoming fall of RHESSI is another reminder that Earth orbit is becoming an increasingly crowded and dangerous place.

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For example, over 30 pieces of orbital debris are currently tracked by global space surveillance networks. But there are many more fragments that are too small for us to follow.

According to the European Space Agency, about 1 million objects with a width of 1 to 10 centimeters are currently orbiting our planet. And the approximate number of pieces ranging in size from 1 millimeter to 10 mm is really staggering - 130 million or so.

Even these tiny fragments can cause serious damage if they collide with a satellite or a crewed spacecraft, given their tremendous speed: in low Earth orbit, where the International Space Station and many other ships fly, objects move at a speed of about 28 km / h .

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And collisions in space generate many more pieces of space debris, which could lead to even more collisions in the future. If there is a lot of debris and collisions, we will get a terrible cascade known as Kessler syndrome, which can seriously limit our ability to explore and use space.

The RHESSI satellite was launched into low Earth orbit aboard a Pegasus XL rocket in February 2002. The spacecraft studied solar flares and coronal mass ejections using the only scientific instrument, a spectrometer that records x-rays and gamma rays.

“During its mission, RHESSI recorded more than 100 X-ray events, allowing scientists to study energetic particles in solar flares,” NASA officials wrote on April 000. “The imager helped the researchers determine the frequency, location and motion of the particles, which helped them understand where the particles were accelerating.”

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RHESSI will not be the biggest piece of space debris that will fall uncontrollably to Earth. Last November, for example, the 23-ton main stage of China's Long March 5V rocket crashed to Earth about five days after the launch of the third and final module of the Tiangong national space station.

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