Out-of-control satellite plunges back to Earth after 13 years out of orbit
An out-of-control satellite finally fell to Earth Wednesday afternoon after spending 13 years being slowly pulled out of orbit — harmlessly plunging into the Pacific Ocean, experts said.
The European Space Agency’s 5,550-pound ERS-2 satellite reentered the atmosphere at 12:17 p.m. Eastern Time somewhere “over the North Pacific Ocean between Alaska and Hawaii,” according to ESA Operations.
The agency had predicted that the bus-sized satellite would break into pieces and disintegrate upon arrival before landing in a body of water, which covers 71% of the surface area of the planet.
During a press conference last week, officials said that the largest fragment that could reach the ground would be about 115 pounds, and estimated that the odds of it falling on someone’s head were “one in a billion.”
The trajectory of ERS-2’s fall was “impossible” to predict, because its reentry was “natural” and not controlled by humans.
“It’s worth highlighting that none of the elements that might re-enter the atmosphere (and reach the surface) are radioactive or toxic,” said Mirko Albani from ESA’s Earth Observation Ground Segment Department.
Launched in 1995, ERS-2 was Europe’s then-most “sophisticated Earth observation spacecraft ever developed,” and spend the next 16 years collecting data from the planet’s surface and studying natural disasters in remote locations.
The ESA had committed to leaving zero debris in space from its missions by 2030.
Officials said if ERS-2 was left to spin around the globe instead of being deorbited, it would have taken between 100 and 200 years to fall back to Earth.
