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The long space odyssey of a NASA geophysical satellite is coming to an end.
the Orbiting Geophysics Observatory 1 spacecraft, or OGO-1, launched in September 1964 to study the Earth’s magnetic environment and how our planet interacts with the sun. The satellite collected data until 1969, was officially decommissioned in 1971, and has since then silently zoomed around the Earth in a two-day highly elliptical orbit.
But the days of OGO-1 are numbered. New observations show that Earth’s gravity eventually caught up to 1070 pounds. (487 kilograms) satellite, which is expected to die a fiery death in our planet’s atmosphere this weekend.
“OGO-1 is expected to enter one of its next three perigee, the points in the spacecraft’s orbit closest to our factory, and according to current estimates, OGO-1 will enter Earth’s atmosphere on Saturday, August 29, 2020, around 5:10 p.m. EDT [2110 GMT], over the South Pacific, roughly halfway between Tahiti and the Cook Islands, “NASA officials written in an update Thursday (August 27).
“The spacecraft will decompose in the atmosphere and pose no threat to our planet – or anyone on it – and this is a normal final operational event for a retired spacecraft,” said they added.
The new sightings are courtesy of the University of Arizona’s Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) and the University of Hawaii’s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), both of which independently detected a small object on an apparent impact path.
Analyzes by researchers at CSS, the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (NEO) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, and the NEO Coordination Center at the European Space Agency revealed that the object in question was not an object. asteroid but rather OGO-1, NASA officials said.
OGO-1 was the first satellite in the six-spacecraft OGO program, the remaining members of which were launched in 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968 and 1969. These five all returned to Earth, more recently in 2011, reintegrating various oceanic plots.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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