NASAThe battery at the ISS
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 09:13
An ISS battery that crashes back to Earth may also pass over the Netherlands today. The chance of danger is small, but a light show or sonic boom is possible.
“It is spectacular when it comes down over our regions,” says satellite expert Marco Langbroek. “The object breaks into pieces between 80 and 50 kilometers above sea level and then burns into a series of slowly falling fragments.”
The scene resembles a swarm of hundreds of shooting stars, says Langbroek. “But the chance that we will actually see something here is not great, one percent or less.”
Langbroek already captured the object yesterday:
This concerns a battery the size of a passenger car, weighing 2,600 kilos and measuring 12 cubic meters. It was rejected by the International Space Station in 2021 and is now returning to the atmosphere uncontrolled. It is the largest object ever to return to Earth from the ISS.
The European Space Agency has calculated that the battery will enter the atmosphere above North America within twenty hours around 7 p.m. What time and where exactly it can reach Earth depends on the delay it experiences due to the atmosphere.
Experts follow the object closely: the course of the object is tracked using radar, among other things. If necessary, warnings will follow. “Predictions are always very inaccurate until about an hour before it is going to happen,” Langbroek explains. “But if it is above the Netherlands around that time, I will go and see if I can’t see anything.”
‘Sowing panic’
The German disaster agency provided detailed information that the space debris possibly three times crosses German airspace. At the middle of those three around 6:20 p.m., parts of the Netherlands are also in the path, such as part of the North Sea coast, Gelderland, North Limburg and Brabant.
Langbroek thinks a special press release like that of the Germans is a bit exaggerated, given the minimal chance of danger. “It’s not a small object, but objects of this size land every month. Perhaps it was taken into account that this time it is not a rocket stage, but something that is more solid. There may be more of that, but then I still don’t understand why you so creates panic.”
NASA points out that space debris is falling uncontrollably back to Earth more often, an average of once a day over the past fifty years. What does not burn up often ends up in the ocean or uninhabited areas. It has never killed anyone.
2024-03-08 08:13:25
#Falling #ISS #debris #possibly #Netherlands #Ill
