Space travel
Remains of ISS battery crashed into sea near Caribbean
The trajectory of a discarded battery pack from the ISS around the Earth is displayed on a monitor. photo
© Christoph Reichwein/dpa
It was a fairly normal process, but the excitement in Germany was still relatively great. A battery pack on the ISS largely burned up when it entered the atmosphere.
A discarded battery pack from the International Space Station (ISS) largely burned up over Central America – smaller pieces of debris reportedly fell into the sea in a corridor between Guatemala and Florida.
The battery block entered the earth’s atmosphere on Friday evening at 8:29 p.m., said spokeswoman for the Bundeswehr Space Situation Center, Simone Meyer. The reentry occurred approximately where the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico meet. Nothing was initially known about any damage.
The pallet with nine old ISS batteries had previously flown over Germany. At 7:21 p.m., the package came from the west and flew over the middle of Germany at an altitude of 139 kilometers, according to the space situation center, which then gave the all-clear for the Federal Republic.
Excitement in Germany
Several organizations, including the Federal Ministry of Economics responsible for space travel and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), had already informed about the battery pack on Thursday – and spoke of a low risk for Germany. The fact that the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) had distributed its assessment – that there was a very low probability of debris in Germany – via warning apps as official danger information caused some excitement.
The manner in which the ISS battery pack was disposed of was entirely intentional. The platform with battery packs – about the size of a car and weighing around 2.6 tons – was detached from the ISS in March 2021 with the aim of burning up in the atmosphere years later. Outside Germany, interest in the event was comparatively low.
Space debris entering the atmosphere and remnants reaching the Earth’s surface happens all the time. The European Space Agency (Esa) writes: “Approximately every week a large space object re-enters in an uncontrolled manner, and most of the associated fragments burn up before they reach the ground.”
According to the US space agency NASA, an average of one known piece has fallen to Earth per day over the past 50 years. So far, no serious injuries or significant property damage have been reported as a result.