This was the launch of the Landsat 9 satellite 0:47
(CNN) --
An old NASA satellite has plummeted back to Earth after 38 years of orbiting the planet.
The Earth Radiation Budget Satellite, known as ERBS, was launched in 1984 aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
Until 2005, ERBS data helped researchers figure out how Earth absorbed and radiated energy from the Sun, and measured concentrations of ozone, water vapor, nitrogen dioxide, and aerosols in Earth's stratosphere.
NASA's former ERBS satellite re-entered Earth's atmosphere on January 8, 2023.
The US Department of Defense confirmed that ERBS re-entered Earth's atmosphere this Sunday at 11:04 pm Miami time over the Bering Sea, according to a NASA statement.
It was not immediately clear if parts of the satellite survived the re-entry.
Most of the satellite was expected to burn up as it moved through the atmosphere.
NASA had calculated that the risk of harm to anyone on Earth was very low: about 1 in 9,400.
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The satellite far exceeded its two-year expected lifespan, operating for a total of 21 years.
An instrument aboard ERBS, the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment II (SAGE II), collected data confirming that the ozone layer was declining on a global scale, NASA said.
NASA's Orion spacecraft reaches the farthest distance from Earth on the Artemis I mission
That information helped shape the Montreal Protocol Agreement, an international pact signed in 1987 by dozens of countries, which resulted in a dramatic decline worldwide in the use of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), chemicals that some They were once commonly used in aerosols, refrigeration, and air conditioners.
If a CFC ban had not been agreed, the world would be on track for an ozone layer collapse and an additional 2.5 degrees Celsius of global warming by the end of the century, according to a 2021 study.
Today, SAGE III on the International Space Station collects data on the health of the ozone layer.
NASASatellite