Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Old NASA satellite predicted to reenter the atmosphere tomorrow

By

An old NASA satellite is set to reenter the atmosphere tomorrow, Sunday, January 8. Though most of the satellite is expected to burn up in the atmosphere and pose minimal risk, some debris could reach the surface. NASA satellites launched today are designed to deorbit more gracefully and with less risk of creating space debris, but this satellite was launched in 1984 before guidelines were in place.

The current guidelines, updated in November 2019, require that any risk of a deorbiting satellite impacting people on Earth is less than 1 in 10,000. The old satellite doesn’t quite meet that requirement as there is marginally more risk from its impact. “NASA expects most of the satellite to burn up as it travels through the atmosphere, but some components are expected to survive the reentry,” the agency wrote in a statement. “The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is very low – approximately 1 in 9,400.”

NASA’s retired Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere in early January.
NASA’s retired Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere in early January. NASA

The Department of Defense predicts that the satellite will reenter the atmosphere within a 17-hour window on either side of 6:40 p.m. ET on Sunday. Tracking of the satellite will continue, as it is not yet known where any debris could be expected to land.

Recommended Videos

The satellite is called Earth Radiation Budget Satellite or ERBS and weighs 5,400 pounds. Launched in 1984, it was an early tool for investigating climate change from space. Among other things, it measured the Earth’s radiative energy budget, which refers to how much energy our planet gets from the sun and how much it emits out into space. This measurement is related to climate factors such as aerosols and greenhouse gases as well as formations such as clouds and surface geography.

Related

Running far beyond its originally planned lifespan of two years, ERBS continued to collect data until 2005 — making it a 21-year mission in total. The satellite was launched from the Space Shuttle Challenger and is notable for having trouble with deploying its solar panels when first launched. Pioneering American astronaut Sally Ride had to use a robotic arm from the Space Shuttle to shake it loose and move the panel into sunlight, allowing it to fully deploy.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
NASA selects 9 companies to work on low-cost Mars projects
This mosaic is made up of more than 100 images captured by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter, which operated around Mars from 1976 to 1980. The scar across the center of the planet is the vast Valles Marineris canyon system.

NASA is expanding its plans for Mars, looking at not only a big, high-budget, long-term project to bring back a sample from Mars but also smaller, lower-cost missions to enable exploration of the red planet. The agency recently announced it has selected nine private companies that will perform a total of 12 studies into small-scale projects for enabling Mars science.

The companies include big names in aerospace like Lockheed Martin and United Launch Services, but also smaller companies like Redwire Space and Astrobotic, which recently landed on the surface of the moon. Each project will get a 12-week study to be completed this summer, with NASA looking at the results to see if it will incorporate any of the ideas into its future Mars exploration plans.

Read more
NASA gives Starliner’s first crewed launch the go-ahead
NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams prepare for their mission in the company’s Starliner spacecraft simulator at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

NASA has completed its readiness review of the Boeing Starliner, a new spacecraft designed to carry astronauts from Earth to the International Space Station (ISS) and back. With the first crewed test flight of the Starliner less than two weeks away, NASA has given the go-ahead for the launch. If successful, the Starliner will join the SpaceX Crew Dragon as the first American spacecraft to carry astronauts since the Space Shuttle.

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida today, Thursday April 25, in time to prepare for the first launch of the Starliner in around a week-and-a-half. Arriving in a T-38 jet, Wilmore and Williams said they were excited to be in Florida and for the launch date to arrive.

Read more
Psyche spacecraft sends data back to Earth using lasers for the first time
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is shown in a clean room at the Astrotech Space Operations facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 8, 2022. DSOC’s gold-capped flight laser transceiver can be seen, near center, attached to the spacecraft.

NASA's experimental laser communication system, riding along with the Psyche spacecraft, has hit another milestone. The system was recently used to transmit Psyche data from over 140 million miles (226 million kilometers) away.

The system, called Deep Space Optical Communications, or DSOC, has previously been used to send test data and even to send a video of a cat, to test whether using laser communications in addition to the usual radio communications is possible. But as this is technology is experimental, the Psyche spacecraft has its own radio communications system it has been using to transmit its science data. Now, though, DSOC has been able to interface with the Psyche systems and send Psyche engineering data back to Earth as well.

Read more