A discarded battery pack from the ISS space station has been flying around the earth for three years – and has come ever closer to our planet. Now it has crashed in the ocean.
Debris from the battery pack that was dropped in 2021 crashed in the Atlantic on Friday evening.
NASA
There had previously been concerns that debris could fall onto the Federal Republic, although that was considered very unlikely. The space situation center gave the all-clear in the evening.
The object was a pallet containing nine disused batteries from the International Space Station (ISS). The platform with battery packs was about the size of a car and weighed around 2.6 tons. It was detached from the ISS in March 2021 with the aim of later burning up in the atmosphere.
There are over 20,000 objects traveling in space
It is common practice for space debris to enter the atmosphere and burn up there. Just a few weeks ago, the European satellite ERS-2, which was launched almost thirty years ago, came to such an end and was destroyed as planned. It also happens again and again that smaller debris reaches the earth’s surface. They usually fall over the ocean or uninhabited areas. According to the US space agency NASA, an average of one known piece has fallen to Earth per day over the past fifty years. So far, no serious injuries or significant material damage have been reported as a result.
According to the US space agency Nasa, there are currently more than 25,000 objects with a diameter of more than ten centimeters in space, around 500,000 with a diameter between one and ten centimeters and more than 100 million particles that are larger than one millimeter . In total there are more than 9,000 tons. The main causes are satellite explosions and collisions.
Many countries active in space have expressed concern and have advocated reducing the creation of further space debris as much as possible – for example by appropriately designing spaceships and satellites.