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NASA telescope will burn up in atmosphere, debris may reach Earth

Photo: NASA

Tengrinews.kz - NASA's space telescope is set to burn up in Earth's atmosphere in early November, and some debris may reach our planet, according to Naked Science.

Jonathan McDowell, a specialist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, noted on the social media platform X that the orbit of the aging NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) space telescope has decreased to the point where it will soon re-enter Earth's atmosphere.

McDowell stated that on October 29, NEOWISE was orbiting with a perigee of 206 kilometers and an apogee of 213 kilometers. According to the scientist's estimate, the spacecraft will enter the Earth's atmosphere on November 2.

The (super succesful) NASA infrared astronomy satellite WISE, launched to a 527 x 532 km orbit in 2009 and retired on 2024 Aug 8, is now in a 206 x 213 km orbit; the 645 kg spacecraft is expected to reenter on Saturday.
— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) October 30, 2024

The publication highlights that because the telescope is quite large, some of its debris could reach the Earth's surface.

Earlier, NASA announced that the NEOWISE orbital telescope had completed its mission on July 31, 2024, and was put into hibernation a week later.

In 2027, NASA plans to launch a successor to NEOWISE - a new infrared telescope called NEO Surveyor. This new telescope will focus on finding and detecting asteroids and comets that may pose a threat to Earth.

NEOWISE was designated to observe asteroids and comets, particularly those that could be dangerous to our planet. Launched in December 2009 as WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer), the telescope scanned deep space until February 2011. It discovered the brightest galaxies in the universe, millions of hidden black holes, and the coldest classes of stars, as noted on NASA's website.

In late 2013, the telescope was awakened from hibernation, repurposed, and renamed NEOWISE for the search of near-Earth objects. However, due to increasing solar activity, its orbit began to decline.

Since resuming observations from a low Earth orbit, NEOWISE has made 1.45 million infrared measurements of over 44,000 objects in the solar system, including more than 3,000 near-Earth objects, 215 of which were discovered by the telescope. Among them, 25 are comets.

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