2023-07-28 15:11:47
The first time we realize this kind of fine comeback
“There are two ways to enter the atmosphere“, explains Christian Barbier, astrophysicist at the Liège Space Center (ULiège).It’s either uncontrolled re-entry, which usually ends in a fall into the ocean or desert areas. Either the piloted re-entry where we attach a kind of kamikaze cargo ship to the object, we make a firing and we deorbit the machine. Here, it will be a very fine reentry procedure, namely that we will carry out a whole series of small braking maneuvers, using the little fuel that remains on board the satellite, so as to be able to frame the fall really well in terms of timing and where the satellite fell. From this point of view, this is the first time that we have achieved this kind of fine return.”
This first with Aeolus might become standard procedure in terms of space debris, as far as it is applicable: “This requires that there is fuel left in the satellite and that we can program this kind of successive pulses to finely control the fall of the satellite“, adds Christian Barbier.
It is therefore not always possible, like the European satellite Envisat, the size of a bus, which the engineer cites, and from which we have lost all possibility of communication. It will make an uncontrolled comeback.
“In the future, knowing that the population of objects in orbit is increasing, in particular thanks to or because of SpaceX, with the Starlink satellites, this kind of procedure will perhaps have to be systematized.”
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