NASA's aging black hole-stalking probe switched off

[woofy]

Astronomers are marking the decommissioning of a satellite that has spent 16 years peering into black holes and neutron stars.


NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) helped astronomers establish the existence of highly magnetised neutron stars and collected the first evidence of the spacetime-distorting frame-dragging effect around a black hole as predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity.



Although the data it streamed down to Earth resulted in more than 2,200 academic papers and 92 doctoral theses, RXTE and its instruments had started to show their age, according to Tod Strohmayer, RXTE project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre.

 

[easily confused]

NASA boffins said that RXTE would re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and burn up somewhere “between 2014 and 2023”.

Can someone explain, to me, why these crafts are not designed with systems that allow for the intentional destruction, in small increments that would eliminate all this space junk floating around waiting to re-enter the earths atmosphere, or why they don't set them up with a specific fuel reservoir that would allow them to be fired into deep space after their usefulness has expired. Have today's satellites been equipped for this? Bet not.