Features

The 7,000-pound Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer satellite, built and operated by UC Berkeley, fell from orbit Wednesday night and scattered debris across portions of Egypt and the Persian Gulf.  

Most of the EUVE, which brought back the first extreme ultra-violet images of the sky, disintegrated or melted upon re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere.  

Roger Malina, a UC Berkeley research astronomer who has directed the project since 1996, said the largest surviving pieces would be about the size of a baseball and hit Egypt at about 8:39 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. 

“The satellite was expected to land in the South Pacific, but it came in about 15 minutes later than we expected. It is extremely hard to predict these things,” said Malina.  

The NASA-funded EUVE was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla. on June 7, 1992 and had an initial operation plan of 18 months.  

Malina said NASA was so impressed with the results, that the project was extended twice for a total of nine years.  

The project cost $250 million, “from dream to the crash,” he said. 

The satellite brought back the first map of the sky in the extreme ultra-violet color spectrum, which had been virtually unexplored.  

“It opened up the sky to a different kind of light map, it was a mission of discovery,” said Malina. 

Through the project it was discovered that the sun’s cornea temperature was much higher than previously thought.  

“Scientists used to think it was around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but it’s really way up in the millions,” said Malina 

For the last five years the EUVE mission operation center was quietly located in downtown Berkeley at 2155 Kitteridge St., next door to the California Theater. At the peak of the project there were more than 100 people working around the clock. 

Malina said the EUVE cataloged more than 1,500 new stars and galaxies and “a couple of hundred of those are still a mystery, meaning that nobody knows what they are.”  

For more information about the EUVE project visit, http://ssl.berkeley.edu/euve/.