21–30 of 48 posts
Do these satellites typically have such a seemingly short life?
A British-built weather monitoring spacecraft has been deliberately guided into the Atlantic Ocean, the first time a defunct satellite has been maneuvered to perform an assisted crash on Earth. Aeolus, a satellite that has provided data to weather centers across Europe since 2018, was successfully helped to its final resting place by mission controllers at the European Space Agency.
Maybe it would be time to have a global agreement that all satellites must implement the means of "disposal re-entry" so they can be taken out of the space scrapyard and safely (as much as possible anyway) crashed to earth. The amount of debris in space is going to be a problem that's going to be both costly to solve and very detrimental to future space systems if we continue to not do enough about it.
Not likely. The re entry tech is a critical component of ICBMs. Satellites are relatively easy in comparison, they are just a orbiting computer with a sophisticated radio/signaling processing stack. Most countries can build satellites, but the countries that can put them into orbit are all significant powers. I doubt major powers would be willing to transfer smaller players the technology for controlling re-entry.
Did British and Germans and the rest of ESA members salvage it from the ocean or will it stay as trash in the ocean ? So much money so much power ... yet all we can to is burn it a little in the atmosphere and let the rest fall into the ocean. Ocean is full of life... lets not forget that. Anyway the solution could be a repairable satellite or removable by some device like space shuttle... ESA has the money, scientis…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually just first two paragraphs from the article, I don't know why this was posted.
When I posted the story there was a "text" field, thought it was to provide a summary of the article, but it actually creates a first post.
didn't Galileo do this quite a while back: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/galileo-probe/in-depth... . ?
nevermind the fact that boats are in the Atlantic and could be struck
NAVAREA VII 229 OF 2023: (24 JUL 23) 1. INDIAN OCEAN – SW SECTOR – AND SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEN – SE SECTOR 2. CHART SAN 1 3. AREAS TEMPORARILY DANGEROUS TO NAVIGATION DUE TO ROCKET CARRIER ELEMENTS ATMOSPHERIC RE-ENTRY FROM 0009 – 0712 UTC 27 JUL TO 02 AUG 2023 DAILY. A. 08 - 52S 092 - 27E B. 07 - 45S 089 - 27E C. 30 - 12S 061 - 09E D. 40 - 45S 002 - 20w E. 42 - 56S 002 - 23w F. 32 - 15S 063 - 10E 4. ALL VESSELS REQUESTED TO KEEP CLEAR POTENTIAL DANGER SHOULD VESSELS ENTER RANGE 5. CANCEL THIS MESSAGE 020730 UTC AUG 2023
Controlled deorbits have been a thing for a while, and if we're talking about deorbits designed to minimize risk of debris impact, IIRC Starlink satellites were designed to maximize the amount of the satellite that is vaporized by reentry.
Edit: Ah, the "world's first" is that they were able to choose where any parts that aren't vaporized would crash. The esa article is clearer on that.
I guess if I were to be unnecessarily pedantic, most crewed capsules and reusable ISS resupply vehicles have also technically done that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System