The remains of a discarded battery pack from the International Space Station fell into the Atlantic Ocean on Friday evening. The package consists of nine batteries, weighs 2,600 kilograms, and is the size of a car.
The batteries were scheduled to be separated from the International Space Station on January 11, 2021. The European Space Agency has already expected that the discarded batteries will return to the atmosphere on Friday.
According to a spokesman for the German Army Space Command, the object entered the atmosphere at around 8:29 p.m. where it “probably mostly burned up.” The remaining remains were scattered at sea in an area located between the US state of Florida and Guatemala.
The piece of waste also flew over the Netherlands. According to the European Space Agency, the risk of exposure to the batteries was very small.
Space debris regularly burns up in the atmosphere. Last month, a European satellite carrying an important Dutch climate instrument, the Global Ozone Observing Experiment (GOME), developed by TNO in Delft, sank. This recorded, among other things, atmospheric ozone concentrations.
Improvement: A previous version of this article stated that the batteries had been disconnected 2 months ago. But that happened on January 11, 2021, three years and two months ago. The article has been modified.
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