Space boffins have calculated the risk of the vending machine-sized object actually hitting someone
NASA has warned that a dead satellite that is set to fall from space could end up killing someone – although the chances are pretty small.
The American space agency revealed that the piece of tech – which weighs about the same amount as a vending machine – will reenter Earth’s atmosphere at 9.30pm Eastern Time on Wednesday (19th April).
Most of it will burn up in the sky, but there’s a slight chance that some components will survive the descent and harm someone.
According to boffins at the space centre, the chance currently stands at one in 2,467, which is roughly equivalent to the odds of Spurs ever winning any silverware again.
Where exactly the impact zone will be remains unclear.
NASA will likely share updates about the craft after it crashes back to Earth, but by that time it could be too late!
It’s the second retired NASA satellite to crash into Earth this year. The previous was a 5,400-pound machine that came down in January.
The Department of Defense confirmed that the 5,400-pound satellite reentered the atmosphere over the Bering Sea. NASA expected most of the satellite to burn up as it traveled through the atmosphere, but for some components to survive the reentry.
RHESSI was launched in 2002 to observe solar flares and coronal mass ejections from its low-Earth orbit, helping scientists understand how such powerful bursts of energy are created from our sun
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told DailyMail.com that the reentry window is now plus or minus 11 hours as of Tuesday, and predictions cover half a million miles.
This means experts are not sure yet where the debris will fall.
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