Countdown on ERS-2, a veteran Earth observation satellite.
Launched in 1995, deployed in low orbit and decommissioned in 2011, the machine must complete, around February 20, its slow fall towards our planet by disintegrating as it passes through the atmosphere.
There is, however, a probability that several debris - with a cumulative weight estimated between 52 kg and 300 kg maximum - of this 2.5 tonne satellite will not be consumed and land on a point on the globe.
“The risk of a fragment falling on a human being is very low, i.e. 1 in 100 billion: it is 65,000 times less than the risk of being struck by lightning
,” assures Benjamin Batisda, expert at the control center and re-entry of the European Space Agency's (Esa) satellites in Darmstadt, Germany.
“Since the start of the space age, 2,500 objects, many of them space debris – an average of 150 tonnes of satellites, launcher stages and debris per year – have re-entered the atmosphere…
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