The fate of the NASA spacecraft Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI), which descended from orbit last night, is still unknown.

The US Space Agency has not yet determined whether the decommissioned solar observatory burned up in the atmosphere or if any of the craft’s components made it to the surface of the planet. The fate of the NASA spacecraft Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI), which descended from orbit last night, is still unknown.

If the satellite hadn’t been completely destroyed during atmospheric reentry, tracking by Satflare suggests that it might have hit Chad, Libya, or Sudan in north Africa this morning between 5 and 2.50 AM BST.

According to the U.S. military, a dead NASA spacecraft crashed to Earth Wednesday night (April 19) over northern Africa. According to NASA, the RHESSI satellite returned to Earth’s atmosphere at 8:21 p.m. EDT on Wednesday (00:21 GMT on April 20).

Earlier this week, the US Space Agency said that spacecraft RHESSI has a 1 in 2,467 chance of causing harm if parts of the craft do reach ground level. However, the US Space Agency has yet to reveal whether the satellite did burn up completely and, if not, the exact locations where debris may have fallen.

RHESSI was created to investigate the physics of particle acceleration and energy release in solar flares and coronal mass ejections that originate from the Sun’s surface.

RHESSI was launched into low-Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral in February 2002. In minutes, coronal mass ejections “release the energy equivalent of billions of megatons of TNT into the solar atmosphere and can have effects on Earth, including the disruption of electrical systems,” according to NASA.

It has been difficult to comprehend them. Important hints were provided by RHESSI data. “ It accomplished this using just an imaging spectrometer, which captured the Sun’s X-rays and gamma rays. “Solar flares had never been observed in gamma-ray or high-energy X-ray images before RHESSI.”