Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • The Atlantic

    The Controversial ‘Humanity Star’ Is Coming Back to Earth Early

    A shiny satellite launched in January will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere a few months ahead of schedule.
    by Marina Koren Mar 20, 2018 5 minutes
    Source: Rob Griffith / AP

    Updated on March 20 at 5:53 p.m. ET

    Humanity will come crashing down earlier than expected.

    The Humanity Star, a satellite launched into space in January, will reenter Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrate sometime this week, according to websites that track the movement of objects in orbit around the planet. The satellite was always going to come back down. But it was supposed to remain in orbit for nine months, according to Rocket Lab, the U.S. spaceflight company, based in New Zealand, that built the satellite.

    SatView and Space-Track, databases that track all artificial satellites and space probes around Earth, forecast that the Humanity star will reenter the atmosphere sometime on Thursday, March 22. (See SatView’s page here, and Space-Track’s page here.) Rocket Lab’s own tracker shows that the satellite’s altitude is already steadily dropping.

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from The Atlantic

    The Atlantic3 min read
    They Rode the Rails, Made Friends, and Fell Out of Love With America
    The open road is the great American literary device. Whether the example is Jack Kerouac or Tracy Chapman, the national canon is full of travel tales that observe America’s idiosyncrasies and inequalities, its dark corners and lost wanderers, but ult
    The Atlantic6 min read
    There’s Just One Problem With Gun Buybacks
    One warm North Carolina fall morning, a platoon of Durham County Sheriff’s Office employees was enjoying an exhibit of historical firearms in a church parking lot. They were on duty, tasked with running a gun buyback, an event at which citizens can t
    The Atlantic8 min readAmerican Government
    The Return of the John Birch Society
    Michael Smart chuckled as he thought back to their banishment. Truthfully he couldn’t say for sure what the problem had been, why it was that in 2012, the John Birch Society—the far-right organization historically steeped in conspiracism and oppositi

    Related Books & Audiobooks