2023-07-29 16:48:51
The European satellite Aeolus, which had reached the end of its mission in orbit, came down to Earth “successfully” after an unprecedented maneuver to minimize the risk of falling debris on the ground, the European Space Agency announced on Saturday. (ESA).
This Earth observation satellite, launched in 2018 to measure the winds, entered the atmosphere in a controlled manner, after several days of maneuvers intended to lower its orbit.
The machine of just over a ton, which operated at an altitude of 320 km, gradually descended to 120 km, then entered the atmosphere where it disintegrated, on the night of Friday to Saturday .
Aeolus “successfully entered the corridor we were aiming for, above Antarctica, where there is the least population in the world,” Benjamin Bastida, engineer in charge of space debris, told AFP. at ESA.
Controlled assistance maneuvers in the atmosphere are common on recent satellites: when they reach the end of their life, they are desorbed and directed towards a very specific region of the globe, Nemo point in the South Pacific – the farthest place from any land surface.
But Aeolus was designed in the late 1990s and “didn’t have enough propulsion” to fully control its fall and aim for that particular point, which involves descending 50 km, the engineer explains.
At 120 km altitude, the re-entry of Aeolus was not completely controlled, and therefore presented a low risk that the debris – those which would not have been burned in the atmosphere – cause damage to the ground.
Although this risk is minimal, the ESA wanted to reduce it “as much as possible” in order to “demonstrate its commitment to neutral missions in terms of debris”, the objective that the agency has set for 2030.
The radars could not detect if the debris of Aeolus had survived the re-entry into the atmosphere, said Benjamin Bastida. If the satellite had not been desorbed, it would have fallen naturally within two or three months in an uncontrolled manner, he says.
The wind mission was a “pioneer” for measuring wind profiles, and made it possible to “improve weather predictions”, underlined Dominique Gillieron, director of Earth observation scientific programs at ESA.
An “Aeolus 2” mission is in preparation.
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