Weighing 2,450 kilograms, 38 years old and ready for the scrap heap: the Earth’s Radiation Budget Satellite, better known as ERBS, is about to hit Earth. The problem: no one knows exactly where and when.
According to the space agency, the risk of someone getting infected 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.”
NASA and the US Department of Defense say they will monitor reentry Sunday and update forecasts.
On the other hand, the California Aerospace Corporation 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 this to happen in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, or the western regions of North or South America.
ERBS was launched in 1984 aboard the space shuttle Challenger and has been in space ever since. Study how the earth absorbs and radiates energy from the sun. And although its life expectancy at the time was only two years, it continued to take measurements until it was decommissioned in 2005. Since then, ERBS has become space junk and returns to Earth.
