A massive, defunct satellite is set to come crashing through the Earth's atmosphere, plummeting towards the ground, in just a matter of weeks.
Launched into orbit in 1995, the European Space Agency's European Remote Sensing 2 satellite was decommissioned over a decade ago. Since then, it's used up the last of its fuel reserves and is set to reenter the atmosphere "around mid-February" per an Even without the fuel, the massive Earth observatory still weighs north of 5,000 pounds, a giant piece of space debris that could technically wreak havoc if it were to crash into a populated area.called out Chinaon social media showing what appears to be a pair of rocket boosters of a Chinese Long March 3B rocket uncontrollably tumbling towards an inhabited area, resulting in massive fireballs.
Besides turning into a massive piece of space junk, the ERS-2 satellite has "collected a bounty of data on Earth’s diminishing polar ice, changing land surfaces, sea-level rise, warming oceans and atmospheric chemistry," per the agency. It has also assisted during natural disasters. While a largely uncontrolled descent sounds like a reckless decision, its eventual plummet is still technically a more desirable outcome than having it pose a threat to space explorers later down the line.