There's even a small chance it could hit people on the way down.
There's even a small chance it could hit people on the way down.A decades-old NASA satellite is about to plummet back down to Earth — and there's a non-zero chance it could hit somebody on the surface below.
Nearly 21 years after it was launched in 2002, NASA's retired Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager spacecraft — a satellite that observed solar flares and coronal mass ejections — is expected to reenter the Earth's atmosphere this month,While RHESSI was decommissioned back in 2018, it's only now expected to crash back down to Earth.
With the help of RHESSI, scientists also discovered that terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, which are emitted in our planet's atmosphere during lightning storms, are more common than previously thought. But alas, despite all of its efforts, NASA had to retire the satellite after 16 years of service due to communications issues.
In short, RHESSI made some considerable contributions to our understanding of solar flares — and we salute it for its efforts.
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