Along-retired NASA satellite burned up in Earth’s atmosphere last weekend, meeting fiery doom after 56 years in space, the agency has confirmed.

NASA launched the satellite, called Orbiting Geophysics Observatory 1, or OGO-1, in September 1964, the first in a series of five missions to help scientists understand the magnetic environment around Earth. OGO-1 was the first to launch but the last to fall out of orbit; the satellite had circled Earth aimlessly since its retirement in 1971.

But orbiting Earth is a tricky thing to do, since the particles in our plush atmosphere collide with spacecraft and slow them down, even at very high altitudes where the atmosphere is thin. That speed reduction also lowers the spacecraft’s altitude, until re-entry becomes inevitable.

The 1,070-lb. (487 kilograms) OGO-1 experienced that inevitability on Saturday (Aug. 29), as NASA had predicted. The satellite re-entered at 4:44 p.m. EDT (2044 GMT) over the southern Pacific Ocean and burned up in the atmosphere, posing no threat to humans, NASA spokesperson Josh Handal told Space.com in an email.

OGO launches continued through 1969, when OGO-5 began orbiting Earth, but all OGO-1’s successors had already re-entered Earth’s atmosphere.

Source: Live Science

Published in Dawn, Young World, September 5th, 2020