After 38 years orbiting Earth, a large NASA satellite has fallen safely back to Earth, with most of if believed to have burned up during its descent.
The retired Earth Radiation Budget Satellite entered Earth’s atmosphere over the Bering Sea between Alaska and eastern Russia at 11:04 p.m. ET on Sunday, January 8, NASA confirmed in a tweet.
ERBS was carried to orbit by the Space Shuttle Challenger in October 1984. The spacecraft was part of NASA’s three-satellite Earth Radiation Budget Experiment mission and carried with it three instruments — two for taking measurements of Earth’s radiative energy budget, and one for measuring stratospheric constituents, including ozone.
When it began its voyage in 1984, ERBS was expected to operate for a mere two years, but it ended up beaming back data for 21 years until its retirement in 2005.
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