Weighing 2450 kilograms, 38 years old and ready for the scrap heap: the “Earth Radiation Budget Satellite”, known as ERBS, is about to hit the earth. The problem: nobody knows exactly where and when.
According to the space agency, the risk of someone getting hurt is minimal. “Nasa expects most of the satellite to burn up as it makes its way through the atmosphere. But some components are expected to survive re-entry.” “The chance of anyone on Earth being harmed is very small – about 1 in 9400.”
NASA and the US Department of Defense say they will monitor Sunday’s reentry and update forecasts.
The Californian Aerospace Corporation, on the other hand, assumes that the satellite will return to earth on Monday morning – plus or minus 13 hours. Where? You don’t know that here either! Expect it to happen in Africa, Asia, the Middle East or the western areas of North or South America.
The ERBS was launched in 1984 aboard the space shuttle Challenger and has been in space ever since. He studied how the earth absorbs and radiates energy from the sun. And although his life expectancy at the time was just two years, he continued to take measurements until it was decommissioned in 2005. Since then, the ERBS has been space junk and is moving back to Earth.