The US Department of Defence, which is monitoring the satellite, anticipates that the 660-pound spacecraft will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on Wednesday at approximately 9:30 p.m. EDT (7:00 a.m. IST), but exact times can differ.
NASA’s Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) satellite is expected to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere on Wednesday, April 19 — nearly 21 years after its launch. However, according to the US space agency, it poses no hazard to humans.
From its low-Earth orbit, the RHESSI, which was launched in 2002, observed solar flares and coronal mass ejections, assisting scientists in understanding the fundamental physics of how such powerful energy bursts are generated. Due to communication difficulties, NASA decommissioned it in 2018 after 16 years of operation.
The US Department of Defence, which is monitoring the satellite, anticipates that the 660-pound spacecraft will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on Wednesday at approximately 9:30 p.m. EDT (7:00 a.m. IST), but exact times can differ.
NASA anticipates that the majority of the spacecraft will burn up upon re-entry, but that certain components will survive.
In a statement, the agency stated, “The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is low – approximately 1 in 2,467.”
Launched aboard an Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus XL rocket, this was designed to scan the high-energy electrons that carry a significant portion of the energy produced by solar flares.
An imaging spectrometer captured X-rays and gamma rays from the Sun to accomplish this. Before RHESSI, neither gamma-ray nor high-energy X-ray images of solar flares had been captured.
The RHESSI data provided crucial insight into solar flares and the coronal mass ejections that accompany them. These events discharge the energy equivalent of billions of megatons of TNT into the solar atmosphere in a matter of minutes and have the potential to disrupt electrical systems on Earth.
Throughout the duration of its mission, RHESSI recorded over one million X-ray events, enabling scientists to investigate the energetic particles in solar flares.