“The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is low — approximately 1 in 2,467,” the agency said in a statement ahead of the craft’s plummet to the surface.
It has also aided in discoveries relating to the sun’s shape and “terrestrial gamma-ray flashes,” which are bursts that occur over lightning storms on Earth.
While most of the craft is expected to burn up in the atmosphere, some pieces could still smash into the ground, NASA said.Using its imaging spectrometer, RHESSI recorded 100,000 X-ray events on the sun as well as gamma-ray images, NASA said. RHESSI is a relatively lightweight satellite at 660 pounds compared to the others that have launched into or returned from orbit.
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