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NASA recently reported that the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager spacecraft, also known as RHESSI, will crash onto Earth on Wednesday, April 19. The 660-pound satellite has spent over two decades in orbit and is expected to re-enter the atmosphere at approximately 9.30 pm EDT, give or take about 16 hours, according to NASA's announcement on Monday, April 17.
The satellite is expected to burn up during the descent. However, the space agency said that some parts have a chance of surviving the fire. They added that the 660-pound satellite will be converted to ash and vapor upon its arrival on Earth.
In a statement, they said that "the risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is low — approximately 1 in 2,467."
RHESSI was first launched into Earth's low orbit in 2002 and is noted to have observed solar flares and coronal mass ejections. These revelations have helped scientists investigate the physics of the sun's energy bursts.
100,000 X-ray events and gamma-ray images have been recorded by the RHESSI using its imaging spectrometer. This marked the first time that humans had captured gamma rays and high-energy X-ray images of solar flares.
Technicality aside, RHESSI's crashing onto Earth has raised several concerns and sparked hilarious Tweets online. Social media users are taking over Twitter to discuss NASA's decommissioned satellite.
Netizens took to Twitter to discuss NASA's RHESSI crash onto Earth from space
Social media users took to Twitter to discuss the homecoming of NASA's satellite. Some users were elated to see the satellite go down after a wonderful journey, whereas others were concerned about their chances of getting hit by it.
Some netizens also sparked debates over the amount of space debris floating in the sky. They were concerned about how often pieces of space junk could fall onto Earth.
RHESSI was decommissioned in 2018 after scientists faced communication issues
As per NASA's announcement, RHESSI's collected data helped scientists understand the events' physics and how they were created. The flares that it captured routinely emit the energy equivalent of billions of megatons of TNT "within minutes." These blasts in space disrupt electrical grids and systems across the world.
In their announcement, NASA wrote about the other milestones that RHESSI achieved:
“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."
During its 16-year-long tenure, the NASA satellite recorded over 100,000 X-ray events. It was finally decommissioned in 2018 after increasing communication difficulties between the scientists and the satellite. In the past five years, RHESSI has quietly orbited Earth along with an estimated 27,000 pieces of space debris.
According to Space.com, the re-entry of RHESSI brings us to the rising issue of space debris left behind by humans in space. In January, NASA reported that a 38-year-old satellite weighing 5,600 pounds was returning to Earth. This happened after multiple instances of Chinese rocket debris re-entering the atmosphere.
The 660-pound RHESSI is a relatively lightweight satellite compared to other satellites that have been launched into orbit. Although scientists have closely monitored RHESSI's return, the crashing debris problem has been receiving more attention.
In 2021, an unannounced Russian military exercise sent shards of an exploding satellite at full speed towards the International Space Station. The ISS crew had to force themselves into a lockdown despite none of them being injured. Luckily, the space station remained unharmed too.
Several suggestions have been floating around to declutter the crowded skies. Some say that shooting nets should be released to safely drag the debris back towards Earth, whereas others believe that tiny, clawed satellite robots should be sent to space to help clean up the mess we created.
The Federal Communications Commission officially launched its Space Bureau, which is tasked with various responsibilities. This list includes handling orbital trash that has been moving about space untethered. The new director of the bureau, Julie Kearney, explained in a statement:
“The first thing we’re really focused on, of course, is modernizing regulations to match our new realities and supporting tech innovation.”
She added that it would also “simultaneously (be) focusing on space, orbital debris, and space safety.”
Amidst a variety of space discoveries, it is safe to say that space debris needs to be cleaned up. With an estimated 27,000 pieces of junk in space, several users wish that it be cleaned before sending more objects into space.
