An obsolete NASA spacecraft returned to Earth 21 years after its launch

() — A NASA satellite that watched solar flares and helped scientists understand the sun’s powerful bursts of energy fell to Earth this week, nearly 21 years after it was launched.

The retired Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) spacecraft, which launched in 2002 and decommissioned in 2018, re-entered Earth’s atmosphere Wednesday at approximately 8:21 p.m. ET, according to NASA.

The 725 kg spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere over the Sahara desert region at 26 degrees longitude and 21.3 degrees latitude, according to the US Department of Defense.

NASA expected most of the spacecraft to burn up as it traveled through the atmosphere, but some components might have survived re-entry. The risk of harm to anyone on Earth as a result of RHESSI’s return was low: about 1 in 2,467, according to NASA.

“At this time, NASA has not received any reports of damages or harm associated with the re-entry,” the agency said in a statement.

The spacecraft was equipped with an imaging spectrometer, which recorded X-rays and gamma rays from the sun. From its previous position in low-Earth orbit, the satellite captured images of high-energy electrons that carry a large part of the energy released in solar flares, NASA said.

No gamma-ray or high-energy X-ray images of solar flares had been taken before RHESSI, and spacecraft data provided vital clues about the phenomena and their energy ejections. associated coronal mass.

These solar events release the energy equivalent to billions of megatons of TNT into the sun’s atmosphere in a matter of minutes and can have effects on Earth, including disrupting electrical systems.

Over the years, RHESSI has documented the enormous variety in the size of solar flares, from tiny nanoflares to massive superflares that are tens of thousands of times larger and more explosive.