Aeolus – The 1st Dead Satellite – Being Brought Back To Earth

A defunct European satellite named Aeolus made an unprecedented attempt to return to the Earth on Friday. It crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, reported The Guardian.

Aeolus, a weather monitoring satellite, was not designed for a controlled re-entry after the mission, but the European Space Agency (ESA) attempted to guide it towards the remote part of the planet, the report added.

Built by British engineers at Airbus, Aeolus had been orbiting Earth at an altitude of 200 miles (320 km) for five years since its launch in 2018. The satellite was launched to measure wind in the atmosphere to improve weather forecasts. 

The satellite fired lasers towards Earth to track the movement of air in every location and altitude worldwide.

The changes in the wavelength of the light revealed the speed at which various markers and the winds that carry them were moving.

Following five years of mission, Aeolus was “out of fuel and out of time – it's returning to Earth this week. Planned and built before any regulations were put in place on ‘end-of-life' disposal, the Earth Explorer was designed to naturally return through our atmosphere,” the ESA added.

“After months of detailed planning and analysis, ESA together with industrial partners, has designed a complex and never-before-performed set of manoeuvres to control, as much as possible, Aeolus' fall,” the agency added.

It reached an altitude of 174 miles (280 km) on Monday, after which mission controllers in Germany began a series of manoeuvres to steer it to a lower orbit.  It was brought down to 155 miles (250 km), then down to 142 miles (230 km) as the week progressed.

The satellite was ultimately brought down into orbit of 75 miles (120 km) and on a trajectory to fall into the Atlantic about five hours later.