2024-02-22 00:00:01
A large satellite whose mission ended 13 years ago burned up during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere on Wednesday. ERS-2 “safely completed” its re-entry over the North Pacific at around 6:17 p.m. CET, said the European Space Agency ESA in the online service .
The earth observation satellite ERS-2 was launched into space in 1995 and from then on orbited the earth at an altitude of almost 800 kilometers. In 2011 it was switched off and began its journey back to Earth. This was intended to prevent uncontrolled destruction of the satellite, which might have posed a risk to other satellites or the International Space Station (ISS) due to the debris.
At the end of its mission, ESA allowed the satellite to descend to around 500 kilometers so that it might then naturally and gradually descend back to Earth in just 13 years using gravity alone. If it had remained at its original height, it would have taken 100 to 200 years. On the eve of its destruction, ERS-2 was still at an altitude of over 200 kilometers. According to ESA, in the case of ERS-2, the chance that one of its debris would hit a person on the ground was less than one in 100 billion.
Waste from discarded satellites, rocket parts and collision debris has been accumulating since the beginning of the space age – a problem that has only grown in recent decades. ESA estimates there are regarding a million pieces of satellite or rocket debris in orbit that are larger than a centimeter, large enough to “disable a spacecraft” in the event of an impact.
In 2023, ESA launched a “zero debris” charter for space missions starting in 2030.
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