Fragments of a Soviet-era military satellite that was expected to hit Earth burned up in its atmosphere on Sunday, according to Russian television network RT.
The Cosmos-1220 satellite burned up on reentry to the Earth’s atmosphere at 5:58 p.m. Moscow time (8:58 a.m. ET), RT reported, citing Russian Space Command.
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The Russian military was tracking the decommissioned satellite, which was expected to land in the Pacific Ocean, according to local news agency RIA Novosti. Satellite-tracking website N2YO reported that Cosmos 1220 had reentered the Earth's atmosphere Sunday morning.
The Cosmos 1220 originally weighed 4150 kg (9149 pounds), according to NASA. The rocket on which it was launched in 1980 could carry a maximum of 3 metric tons, RIA Novosti reported.
In an effort to reduce orbiting space junk, modern satellites are designed so that they move into "graveyard orbits" when they are no longer in use, but Cosmos 1220 was launched before this protocol was in place. There are currently 100 million bits of man-made debris orbiting the Earth, an issue that Japanese and Swiss scientists are trying to address.
This isn't the first time old space objects have caused concern. A different decommissioned Cosmos satellite crashed into an American satellite in 2009 at a breakneck speed, sending thousands of pieces of debris toward Earth, and a European Space Agency satellite burned up over the Falkland Islands in November.
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