On Friday, a defunct European spacecraft dubbed Aeolus made an extraordinary attempt to return to Earth. It collided with the Atlantic Ocean.
The European Space Agency (ESA) sought to guide Aeolus, a weather monitoring satellite, towards the remote portion of the earth following the mission.
Aeolus, built by British engineers at Airbus, had been orbiting Earth at an altitude of 200 miles (320 km) since its launch in 2018. The satellite was launched to improve weather forecasts by measuring wind in the atmosphere.
The satellite shot lasers toward Earth in order to track the movement of air in every place and height on the planet.
The changes in light wavelength revealed the velocity of several markers and the winds that carried them.
“After five years on the mission, Aeolus was out of fuel and out of time and will return to Earth this week. The Earth Explorer was supposed to naturally return through our atmosphere and was planned and built before any laws on ‘end-of-life’ disposal were in place”, the ESA stated.
“After months of detailed planning and analysis, ESA, together with industrial partners, has designed a complex and never-before-performed set of maneuvers to control, as much as possible, Aeolus’ fall”, the agency noted.
On Monday, it reached an altitude of 174 miles (280 km), and mission controllers in Germany began a series of maneuvers to direct it to a lower orbit. As the week proceeded, it was reduced to 155 miles (250 km), then to 142 miles (230 km).
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