Skip to main content

See the Dramatic Final Moments of the Doomed ERS-2 Satellite

When a satellite reaches the end of its life, it has only two destinations. It can either be maneuvered into a graveyard orbit, a kind of purgatory for satellites, or it plunges to its destruction in Earth’s atmosphere. The ESA’s ERS-2 satellite took the latter option after 30 years in orbit.

ERS-2 was an Earth Observation satellite launched in 1995. It was scheduled to last three years but lasted much longer. In March 2,000, a computer and a gyro failed, and the mission continued but suffered some data degradation. Other equipment failures followed, and the mission finally ended in 2011. ERS-2 was destroyed during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere on February 21st, 2024. But unlike other satellites, the destruction of ERS-2 was caught on camera. The Tracking and Imaging Radar (TIRA) at the Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR in Germany captured images of the satellite’s demise.

A full-size model of ERS-2. Image Credit: By Poppy - Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1393904
A full-size model of ERS-2. Image Credit: By Poppy – Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://ift.tt/FnEadtM

TIRA has a 34-meter tracking antenna, and on February 19, 20 and 21, the facility tracked the satellite for a few minutes while it travelled overhead. A GIF of these images shows ERS-2 tumbling through the sky and its solar array coming loose.

via GIPHY

The images show the solar array coming loose the day before ERS-2 re-entered the atmosphere.

These are more than just interesting images for space buffs. Authorities would like to be able to predict a satellite’s time and place of re-entry so they can plan for it. When they predict a re-entry, they treat it as one object until almost the end. If the solar array on ERS-2 was loose and moving independently from the satellite body a day before re-entry, the satellite would’ve interacted with the atmosphere differently, changing the time and location of its re-entry.

ERS-2 actually re-entered the atmosphere slightly later than initially predicted. Analysts are examining the re-entry data to determine if the solar array buckling was related to the delayed re-entry. The results of their analysis could help experts make more accurate forecasts for future satellite re-entries.

There are no records of a re-entry causing any injury or damage, and NASA says that fewer than a half-dozen of their large pieces of orbital debris re-enter each year. “Since the beginning of the space age in 1957, there has been no confirmed report of an injury resulting from re-entering orbital objects,” according to NASA.

Re-entry is hard to predict, but with so many satellites and other large pieces of debris in orbit, it's becoming more important to predict where and when they'll re-enter. Image Credit: International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety
Re-entry is hard to predict, but with so many satellites and other large pieces of debris in orbit, it’s becoming more important to predict where and when they’ll re-enter. Image Credit: International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety

That doesn’t mean that a satellite re-entry can’t be dangerous, though. Back in 1978, a Soviet nuclear satellite named Kosmos 954 re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. It exploded over northern Canada and spread radioactive debris across parts of Nunavut, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. To this day, one indigenous leader from the region claims that radioactivity from the crash is responsible for higher cancer rates among his people, but scientists say that’s extremely unlikely.

Plenty of objects have struck Earth after re-entry. In 1997, parts of a Delta 2 launch vehicle landed near Georgetown, Texas. One of the pieces weighed 250 kg or over 550 lbs. It landed in an empty field but could’ve caused enormous damage if it had struck a building or other infrastructure.

This is the main propellant tank of the second stage of a Delta 2 launch vehicle, which landed near Georgetown, TX, on 22 January 1997. This approximately 250 kg tank is primarily a stainless steel structure and survived reentry relatively intact. Image Credit: NASA ODPO.
This is the main propellant tank of the second stage of a Delta 2 launch vehicle, which landed near Georgetown, TX, on 22 January 1997. This approximately 250 kg tank is primarily a stainless steel structure and survived reentry relatively intact. Image Credit: NASA ODPO.

NASA is concerned about re-entry and space debris and has an Orbital Debris Program Office (ODPO) at the Johnson Space Center. ODPO is charged with measuring Earth’s orbital environment and helping develop mitigation methods for the debris problem. They use software tools to compute re-entry survivability and to predict any possible risks.

The non-profit corporation Aerospace.org keeps a database of objects that have re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. You can see it here.

The post See the Dramatic Final Moments of the Doomed ERS-2 Satellite appeared first on Universe Today.



from Universe Today https://ift.tt/A89U2cV
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More Data and Machine Learning has Kicked SETI Into High Gear

For over sixty years, astronomers and astrophysicists have been engaged in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). This consists of listening to other star systems for signs of technological activity (or “technosignatures), such as radio transmissions. This first attempt was in 1960, known as Project Ozma, where famed SETI researcher Dr. Frank Drake (father of the Drake Equation) and his colleagues used the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to conduct a radio survey of Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. Since then, the vast majority of SETI surveys have similarly looked for narrowband radio signals since they are very good at propagating through interstellar space. However, the biggest challenge has always been how to filter out radio transmissions on Earth – aka. radio frequency interference (RFI). In a recent study, an international team led by the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (DIAA) applied a new deep-learning algorithm to data collecte...
Post a Comment
Read more

eROSITA Sees Changes in the Most Powerful Quasar

After almost seventy years of study, astronomers are still fascinated by active galactic nuclei (AGN), otherwise known as quasi-stellar objects (or “quasars.”) These are the result of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of massive galaxies, which cause gas and dust to fall in around them and form accretion disks. The material in these disks is accelerated to close to the speed of light, causing it to release tremendous amounts of radiation in the visible, radio, infrared, ultraviolet, gamma-ray, and X-ray wavelengths. In fact, quasars are so bright that they temporarily outshine every star in their host galaxy’s disk combined. The brightest quasar observed to date, 100,000 billion times as luminous as our Sun, is known as SMSS J114447.77-430859.3 (J1144). This AGN is hosted by a galaxy located roughly 9.6 billion light years from Earth between the constellations Centaurus and Hydra. Using data from the eROSITA All Sky Survey and other space telescopes, an international t...
Post a Comment
Read more

The First Close-Up Picture of Star Outside the Milky Way

Like a performer preparing for their big finale, a distant star is shedding its outer layers and preparing to explode as a supernova. Astronomers have been observing the huge star, named WOH G64, since its discovery in the 1970s. It’s one of the largest known stars, and also one of the most luminous and massive red supergiants (RSGs). The star is surrounded by an envelope of expelled star-stuff, which could indicate it’s getting ready to explode. WOH G64 isn’t in the Milky Way; it’s in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy. Getting these detailed image is quite a feat for the ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer. It’s also quite an accomplishment for the team of scientists behind the image. They’ve published their images and the results of their observations of the star in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Their research is titled “ Imaging the innermost circumstellar environment of the red supergiant WOH G64 in the Large Magellanic ...
Post a Comment
Read more