Overview
- The U.S. Space Force now estimates reentry around 7:45 p.m. EDT on March 10 with a ±24-hour window, and agencies will update the forecast as tracking data improves.
- The 1,323-pound spacecraft is expected to burn up largely in the atmosphere, though some components may survive; NASA pegs the casualty risk at roughly 1 in 4,200.
- Because the timing uncertainty remains large, experts cannot yet predict a landing location, with any surviving debris most likely to fall into the ocean.
- An unexpectedly active solar cycle and the 2024 solar maximum expanded Earth’s upper atmosphere, increasing drag and accelerating decay from a 2019 estimate that projected reentry around 2034.
- Launched in 2012 for a two-year mission that operated nearly seven years, the probes revealed phenomena such as a transient third radiation belt; the twin, Probe B, is not expected to reenter before 2030.