NASA approved a safety waiver for this week’s reentry of Van Allen Probe
Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav A NASA satellite that spent more than a decade coursing through the Van Allen radiation belts encircling Earth is about to fall back into the atmosphere. Most of the spacecraft will burn up during reentry, but a fraction of the material making up the 1,323-pound (600-kilogram) satellite will likely reach Earth’s surface without vaporizing in the atmosphere. Uncontrolled reentries of satellites with comparable mass happen quite regularly—multiple times per month, according to one recent study—but most of them are older spacecraft or spent rocket bodies. This reentry is notable because it poses a…
