and commanding of the ROSAT were sufficiently similar to other space assets to provide intruders with valuable information about how such platforms are commanded,". Without public access to the advisory, it is obviously impossible to comment in detail. Even if it did describe a real intrusion, there is a plausible "no attack" explanation for ROSAT's failure, and the report is claimed to link the two incidents as no more than "coincident." However, NASA officials in charge of the day-to-day operations of the ROSAT mission at Goddard, including GSFC Rosat Project Scientist Rob Petre, say definitively that no such incident occurred. Talleur's information appears to have come from one of his interns who exaggerated a hacking incident on an office computer not related to flight operations. IT security remains a significant issue for NASA. Other systems including the Earth Observing System have also been attacked. Re-entry In 1990, the satellite was put in an orbit at an altitude of and inclination of 53°. Due to atmospheric drag, the satellite slowly lost height until, in September 2011, the satellite was orbiting approximately above the Earth. On 23 October 2011 ROSAT re-entered the Earth's atmosphere sometime between 1:45 UTC and 2:15 UTC over the Bay of Bengal, east of India. There was no confirmation if pieces of debris had reached the Earth's surface. Successor eROSITA launched on board the Russian-German Spektr-RG space observatory in 2019. It will provide an updated all-sky survey of the X-ray sky, extending the energy range to 10keV, increase the sensitivity by a factor of 25 and improve the spatial and spectral resolution. Notes References See also List of X-ray space telescopes External links 1RXS Catalog site MPE – ROSAT Development Spacecraft which reentered in 2011 Space telescopes X-ray telescopes Satellites of Germany Spacecraft launched in 1990