After 18 years of loyal service, the RHESSI satellite is coming crashing back to Earth this week.
Heads up, everyone: a 600-pound, decommissioned satellite is on track to fall from orbit on Wednesday. While most of it is expected to burn up upon reentry, “some components are expected to survive,” according to NASA. Don’t worry; there’s probably no need to run for shelter, as the agency estimates that the odds for personal harm are around 1 in 2,467.
“RHESSI even made discoveries not related to flares, such as improving measurements of the Sun’s shape, and showing that terrestrial gamma-ray flashes—bursts of gamma rays emitted from high in Earth’s atmosphere over lightning storms—are more common than previously thought,” NASA writes in their announcement.During its 16-year-long tenure above earth, RHESSI recorded over 100,000 X-ray events, but was finally decommissioned in 2018 following increasing communications difficulties.
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