Dead NASA satellite weighing 600lbs will crash back to Earth TOMORROW

A dead NASA spacecraft will fall from space on Wednesday and crash to Earth — and there’s a one in 2,500 chance it could kill someone.

The U.S. space agency revealed that the 600-pound piece of technology — similar to a vending machine — will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at 9:30 p.m. ET, with most of it burning up in the air.

But some components will survive the descent, and NASA warns “the risk of harm to someone is… one in 2,467.”

Exactly where the impact zone will be remains unclear, with NASA supposed to share updates on the craft after it crashes back to Earth.

Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) was tasked with observing solar flares before being decommissioned in 2018 after NASA was unable to communicate with it.

This will be the second retired NASA satellite to crash into Earth this year. The previous one was a 5,400-pound machine that came down in January.

Launched in 2002, RHESSI to observe solar flares and coronal mass ejections from its low Earth orbit, to help scientists understand how such powerful bursts of energy are created by our sun.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told DailyMail.com that the reentry window is now plus or minus 11 a.m. as of Tuesday, and predictions span half a million miles.

This means experts are not yet sure where the debris will fall.

While McDowell isn’t too concerned about the damage RHESI causes, NASA’s predictions show it has a higher chance of hitting someone on Earth than being hit by a car.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control shows that the chance of being hit by a car in the US is about 1 in 4,292.

RHESSI was launched Feb. 5 aboard an Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus XL rocket, aiming to image the high-energy electrons that carry much of the energy released by solar flares.

It achieved this with its only instrument, an imaging spectrometer, which recorded X-rays and gamma rays from the sun.

Before RHESSI, no gamma-ray or high-energy X-rays of solar flares had been taken.

Data from RHESSI provided vital clues about solar flares and associated coronal mass ejections.

The resting place of the remaining parts is not yet known, but NASA said “the risk of harming anyone on Earth is low”

These events release the energy equivalent of billions of megatons of TNT into the solar atmosphere within minutes and could have impacts on Earth, including the disruption of electrical systems. It has proved challenging to understand them.

RHESSI recorded more than 100,000 X-rays during its mission period, allowing scientists to study the energetic particles in solar flares.

The imager helped researchers determine the frequency, location and motion of the particles, helping them understand where the particles were being accelerated.

The craft was decommissioned in 2018 due to communication problems.

McDowell said it’s not uncommon for small craft to fall back to Earth, but NASA rarely announces such events.

The last time the agency notified the public was on Jan. 6 when the retired Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) re-entered Earth’s atmosphere at 11:04 p.m. ET.

The Department of Defense confirmed that the 5,400-pound satellite has re-entered the atmosphere over the Bering Sea. NASA expected most of the satellite to burn up as it traveled through the atmosphere, but some components would survive reentry.

And NASA did not share another falling satellite until 2020 – the Orbiting Geophysics Observatory 1 spacecraft (OGO-1).

Launched in 1964, this satellite collected data about Earth’s magnetic environment and how our planet interacted with the sun and was decommissioned in 1971.

It returned home on August 29, 2020 over the South Pacific, about halfway between Tahiti and the Cook Islands.

The spacecraft erupted into the atmosphere and posed no threat to our planet — or anyone for that matter.