Launched in 1984 and operational until 2005, NASA’s Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) will now make its grand return to the Earth’s atmosphere. A historic “return to sender” and not necessarily anticipated by NASA teams, which should not, however, endanger inhabited areas.
1 in 9,400. This is the probability calculated by NASA teams concerning the possibility that debris from the satellite will cause damage on Earth. While most of the ERBS satellite should burn up in the atmosphere, some debris are likely to survive the journey and crash into our planet. The American space agency is however confident. According to her, no one will be affected by this event: “The chance of anyone on Earth being harmed is very low – about 1 in 9,400.”
The risk of a modern satellite meeting a similar fate is remote. Since 2019 NASA has implemented certain standards for redirect automatically satellites in perdition or at the end of their life, if it is not possible to recover and recycle them, towards the confines of the universe.
To read : NASA reveals the impact of the Chinese rocket on the Moon
Is space getting out of control?
This incident, while posing little threat to our Earth, adds to the long list of incidents involving dangerous spacecraft returns to Earth. China, for example, has in recent months suffered on various occasions from the uncontrolled returns of certain parts of its space vehicles. A Chinese space launcher, as long as a 9 storey building, for example, had threatened to crash into habitable areas. This incident had thus paralyzed the Spanish airspace because of the potential risks of returning to Iberian lands.
Beyond these events, the ever-increasing amount of space waste also raises many questions. Veritable “ticking time bombs”, there are hundreds of thousands of them orbiting the Earth at an average speed of 25,000 km/h be more than 15 times faster than a bullet fired by a firearm. By 2030, an estimated 1.2 million residues are expected to intersect uncontrollably in our Near Space.
Source : engadget.com
