All things that go up must eventually come down. NASA says that its Van Allen Probe A satellite has fallen precipitously back to Earth after a 14-year journey through space. The probe reentered the atmosphere at 6:37 a.m. ET Wednesday over the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Launched in 2012, the Van Allen Probe A is one of two satellites that NASA sent into orbit around the Van Allen radiation belt, which exists around Earth because of solar winds caught in the Earth's magnetosphere. The probes were supposed to remain in space for only two years but ultimately measured radiation for seven years before running out of fuel in 2019. Without fuel, the probes couldn't orient themselves toward the sun to power their solar panels and both shut down.
Once the mission ended, NASA originally calculated that the probes would fall back to Earth sometime in 2032. The agency acknowledges, though, that it didn't account for the current solar maximum, a period of increased instability on the sun, which leads to more intense space weather events. NASA says the extra solar wind caused drag on the probe, causing a descent faster than initial calculations predicted.
Data from these probes is still used today to measure and predict the impact of solar winds and radiation on communications systems, navigation satellites, power grids and even astronauts in space. The radiation that the Van Allen Probes studied is also the same radiation responsible for all of those gorgeous auroras Earth has been getting lately.
Did the probe hurt anyone when it came back?
NASA said most of the spacecraft likely burned up as it sped downward through the atmosphere, although some components may have survived.
The agency originally predicted the return for around 7:45 p.m. ET Tuesday, noting that it could take up to 24 hours for the event to occur. It was off by 11 hours.
Before the splashdown, NASA predicted a 1 in 4,200 chance of any wreckage landing somewhere that could cause human harm. The coordinates that the space agency gave Wednesday for the reentry point -- approximately 2 degrees south latitude and 255.3 degrees east longitude -- are just south of the Equator and west of South America, meaning well out over the ocean.
The probe's partner, Van Allen Probe B, is also scheduled to crash back to Earth, but it isn't expected to arrive until 2030 or later.