A retired NASA spacecraft will reenter Earth’s atmosphere on Wednesday, with some parts of the vehicle expected to crash to Earth.
While most of the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager spacecraft is expected to burn up as it enters the atmosphere at high speed, some parts of the 660-pound machine are likely to survive the descent.
NASA and the Defense Department will continue to monitor the spacecraft’s movements and will update their predictions — hopefully with a landing zone — when new data becomes available. The spacecraft’s activities included imaging the high-energy electrons that carry a large part of the energy released in solar flares. Using its imaging spectrometer, RHESSI became the first-ever mission to record gamma-ray images and high-energy X-ray images of solar flares.
“Data from RHESSI provided vital clues about solar flares and their associated coronal mass ejections,” NASA said. “These events release the energy equivalent of billions of megatons of TNT into the solar atmosphere within minutes and can have effects on Earth, including the disruption of electrical systems. Understanding them has proven challenging.”
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