Down to Earth

Part of a rocket and its cargo of two dead satellites crashed back to Earth last weekend. Up to 8 kilograms of the hardware may have survived re-entry. The satellites—NASA’s High Energy Transient Experiment (HETE) and the Argentine SAC-B satellite—were designed to scan space for bursts of gamma rays. Both were launched from Virginia in 1996, but the final stage of the rocket failed to release them and they both died of power failure days later. NASA launched a replacement HETE-II satellite in 2000.