A defunct satellite will fall to the Earth today in a never-before-performed set of manoeuvres.
The Aeolus satellite is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission launched in 2018 to measure the Earth’s winds from space.
The 1360-kg satellite was operating successfully for the past five years, but is now out of fuel and is returning to the Earth this week.
Planned and built before any regulations were put in place on ‘end-of-life’ disposal, the satellite was designed to return through our atmosphere naturally.
To ensure that the satellite does not pose a hazard to people or property on Earth, ESA is planning to guide the satellite through a controlled reentry into the atmosphere later today.
The reentry will begin when the satellite is at an altitude of about 93 miles. The remaining fuel on the satellite will be used to steer it into a controlled descent.
As of today, all four manoeuvres of the reentry were successfully executed and Aeolus is already skimming the top of our atmosphere, being buffeted by denser air – our planet’s protective shield – in a preview of what’s to come tonight. The satellite is now sailing at an altitude below 160 km.
However, a ‘major anomaly’ occurred last night that could have caused the assisted re-entry attempt to be aborted.
Since Aeolus wasn’t meant to be manoeuvred at such low altitudes flying through this part of the atmosphere is extremely challenging for it.
‘Teams have already begun flying Aeolus in a new way, pointing the spacecraft into the oncoming ‘wind’ to keep it stable in the last hours of its pioneering life,’ said ESA.
The satellite will then heat up as it enters the atmosphere, eventually burning up completely.
‘The UK Space Agency operates the UK’s re-entry warning service and has tasked our UK sensors to observe the re-entry,’ said Angus Stewart, head of space surveillance and tracking at the UK Space Agency.
‘If observations are obtained, these will be provided to ESA and the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) to support the re-entry analysis.’
The reentry is expected to occur over a remote stretch of the Atlantic Ocean.
As populated regions make up a relatively small percentage of Earth’s surface, the chance of a re-entry causing any harm is exceptionally low, according to the ESA.
The general risk from reentering satellites is already very low. For example, the risk of an individual being hit by a piece of space debris is approximately three times lower than the risk from a falling meteorite.
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