A Giant Piece of Space Station Trash Will Crash to Earth this Weekend
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
A 2.9-ton cargo pallet, once used for a critical battery upgrade mission on the International Space Station (ISS), is now approaching the end of its journey and is expected to reenter the Earth's atmosphere in the coming days.
The pallet, tossed from the ISS in March 2021 by the trusty Canadarm2, is facing imminent destruction in Earth's atmosphere three years after serving its purpose in a major battery replacement project on the station. According to Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer Jonathan McDowell, the pallet will not totally burn up on reentry-about half a ton of fragments will likely hit the Earth's surface," McDowell noted on X.
It's the end of the orbital road for the heaviest piece of ISS space trash, which has been gradually falling towards Earth like a fly getting sucked up in a kitchen drain. The expected reentry of the cargo pallet into Earth's atmosphere is between March 8 at 7:30 a.m. ET and March 9 at 3:30 a.m. ET, according to McDowell. The exact location of reentry is not known.
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