The US military predicts that the 5,400-pound (2,450 kilograms) Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) will crash back to its home planet Sunday around 6:40 p.m. EST (2340 GMT), plus or minus 17 hours, NASA officials said, according to Space.com.
"NASA expects most of the satellite to burn up as it travels through the atmosphere, but some components are expected to survive the reentry," agency officials wrote in an update(opens in new tab) on Friday evening (Jan. 6). "The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is very low — approximately 1 in 9,400."
ERBS, part of NASA's three-satellite Earth Radiation Budget Experiment mission, launched to low Earth orbit aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1984.
ERBS used three scientific instruments to study how our planet absorbs and radiates solar energy. It was designed to operate for just two years but kept ticking until 2005, after which it became a hefty hunk of space junk. Drag has been pulling the spacecraft down gradually ever since.
SKH/PR