The 300 kilogram heavy NASA space telescope RHESSI will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on Thursday night. The exact place and time are not yet known, it can be up to 16 hours move forward or backward.
According to current calculations, the event should take place early Thursday morning at 3:30 a.m. While most of the material is likely to burn up upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, some parts will reach the ground, according to NASA. The chance that a human from a falling part is injured, according to NASA, however, is low. she amounts to 1 in 2,467 or 0.0004 percent.
Teleskop has been retired since 2018
The Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) was developed in the February 2002 sent into orbit and has since been used for solar observation in the X-ray and gamma range. The originally planned mission duration was 2 years, but was repeatedly extended until 2018. In the August 2018 the telescope was finally retired.
The RHESSI data provided important insights into solar flares and those associated with it coronal mass ejections. These events unleash the energy of billions of megatons of TNT in a matter of minutes and can also impact the Earth. you cause magnetic stormswhich can damage satellites and also disrupt electrical systems on earth.
Shape of the sun calculated
During its mission, RHESSI observed more than 100,000 such events – ranging from small nano-eruptions to massive super-eruptions. In addition, it also contributed to the shape of the sun to better determine. It’s not perfectly round, but slightly oval. The word “light” must be emphasized: the diameter at the equator is approximately 12 Kilometer larger than if the sun were a perfect sphere. With a total diameter of 1.4 million kilometers this deviation is marginal.
But RHESSI could do it too terrestrial Gamma flashes captured during thunderstorms high in the Earth’s atmosphere. The telescope revitalized this field of research because it showed that such gamma-ray bursts are more frequent and brighter than previously thought. The numbers indicated that it was up to 400 outbreaks in thunderstorms in different parts of the world.
