A DEAD satellite is set to crash to Earth today after nearly 40 years in space – and NASA doesn’t know where it will land.
The Earth Radiation Budget Satellite is expected to plummet from the sky on Sunday night – give or take 17 hours.
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NASA said most of the 2,450kg satellite will burn up upon re-entry – but some debris will survive the journey.
It said the chance of any debris falling on anybody is very low.
The space agency put the odds of injury from the wreckage at about 1 in 9,400.
“NASA expects most of the satellite to burn up as it travels through the atmosphere, but some components are expected to survive the re-entry,” it said.
“The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is very low – approximately 1 in 9,400.”
NASA and the US Defense Department said it will continue to monitor the re-entry and update predictions.
Meanwhile, the California-based Aerospace Corporation said it believes the satellite will hit Earth on Monday morning – give or take 13 hours.
It expects it to pass over Africa, Asia the Middle East, or the western areas of North and South America.
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A map of its predicted path shows how the satellite could land almost anywhere in the world.
The Earth Radiation Budget Satellite, known as ERBS, was launched in 1984 aboard space shuttle Challenger.
It was released into orbit by America’s first woman in space, Sally Ride, using Challenger’s robot arm.
It was the second and final spaceflight for the astronaut, who died in 2012.
Although the satellite’s expected working lifetime was two years, it kept making ozone and other atmospheric measurements until its retirement in 2005.
It then became a hefty piece of “space junk” – and has been gradually slipping back down to Earth ever since.
The satellite studied how Earth absorbed and radiated energy from the sun.
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