{"id":155009,"date":"2023-01-09T18:23:50","date_gmt":"2023-01-10T00:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/5400-pound-nasa-satellite-falls-back-to-earth-after-nearly-40-years-in-space"},"modified":"2023-01-09T18:23:50","modified_gmt":"2023-01-10T00:23:50","slug":"5400-pound-nasa-satellite-falls-back-to-earth-after-nearly-40-years-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/5400-pound-nasa-satellite-falls-back-to-earth-after-nearly-40-years-in-space","title":{"rendered":"5,400-Pound NASA Satellite Falls Back to Earth After Nearly 40 Years in Space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/5400-pound-nasa-satellite-falls-back-to-earth-after-nearly-40-years-in-space2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The satellite had an expected two-year-service life, but it blew past that mark. \u201cFor 21 of its years in orbit, the ERBS actively investigated how the Earth absorbed and radiated energy from the Sun, and made measurements of stratospheric ozone, water vapor, nitrogen dioxide, and aerosols,\u201d NASA said.<\/p>\n<p>Spacefaring machines that come back to Earth are subject to an intense reentry process. NASA expected most of ERBS to burn up, \u201cbut for some components to survive the reentry.\u201d The return trajectory over a body of water means anything that wasn\u2019t toast likely fell harmlessly into the sea.<\/p>\n<p>The satellite\u2019s uneventful fall back to its home planet is a bit of good news at a time when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/science\/features\/space-has-become-a-junkyard-and-its-getting-worse\/\">orbital space is increasingly crowded<\/a> with junk, debris and defunct satellites. ERBS went out in a blaze of glory after its distinguished service to science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The satellite had an expected two-year-service life, but it blew past that mark. \u201cFor 21 of its years in orbit, the ERBS actively investigated how the Earth absorbed and radiated energy from the Sun, and made measurements of stratospheric ozone, water vapor, nitrogen dioxide, and aerosols,\u201d NASA said. Spacefaring machines that come back to Earth [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,2028],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-satellites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}