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Satellite guided to assisted crash in Atlantic in world first
- nickserv 3y agoA 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.
- speps 3y agoThanks ChatGPT for the summary!
- sdflhasjd 3y agoIt's actually just first two paragraphs from the article, I don't know why this was posted.
- nickserv 3y agoWhen 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.
- constantly 3y agoI’ve done this before too. HN is broken in this way that if you post a link, the text field is ignored, or the site doesn’t support a link with original text.
- SiempreViernes 3y agoI wonder how British-built Aeolus turned out to be, the initial prime contractor in 2003 was to a UK company, but by the time it was actually launched in 2018 it was Airbus that was the prime...
- rsynnott 3y agoIt was built by Airbus, in the UK, per the article.
- shtumf 3y agoDid 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, scientists... so on. Space agencies should join in the effort and solve such things together if money is a problem or lack of technology.
- 130e13a 3y agothe total volume of all oceans is roughly 1.335 bn km^3. the volums of this sattelite is ~6.612m^3, which is about 4.952*10^-16 % of the total ocean volume. i think it will be fine.
- userbinator 3y agoThe article seems to imply otherwise, but I suspect not much actually reached the surface. Re-entry is extreme and the majority of it would've vapourised in the atmosphere.
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoA shuttle launch to repair or retrieve an end-of-life satellite seems like it would prove rather worse for the environment with the thousand-plus tonnes of fuel, including solid fuel boosters and the 30 tonnes of burned-up fuel tank that also falls in the sea than dropping what remains of a compact car's (the Aeolus dry mass is 1200kg) worth of metal after an unshielded reentry.
- mcpackieh 3y agoFish don't care about a ton or two of scrap metal. Whole ships sink all the time and fish love it.
- matt-attack 3y agoThe satellite was built with only a 3 year operational lifetime? Is that common??
- Renaud 3y agoMaybe 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.
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y agoNot 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.
- pmontra 3y agoWould it be possible that whoever launches the satellite (in a major power) somehow adds to it a re-entry module, so the knowledge and sensible devices stay out of the reach of lesser powers?
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y agoIt would take a lot of trust. You can basically stick a bug in there and siphon the radio data (yes there is encryption etc. but you probably don't want another actor's hardware being permanently attached to your satellite, opens up all sorts of vulnerabilities. It's close enough for nearfield attacks like EMP or explosives or even wrong sensor data).
- bewaretheirs 3y agoIt would make more sense to ensure that any sensitive technology on board is in a demisable subunit that will melt during reentry, so nobody has a chance to snag it after it reenters. This is also a safety consideration in satellite design - see, for instance: https://spectrum.ieee.org/spacex-claims-to-have-redesigned-its-starlink-satellites-to-eliminate-casualty-risks https://spectrum.ieee.org/spacex-claims-to-have-redesigned-i... If the whole thing comes apart into tiny pieces, you have no chance that anyone/anything on the ground will be injured/damaged by falling debris..
- justsomehnguy 3y agoWay better source: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FutureEO/Aeolus/Aeolus_a_historic_end_to_a_trailblazing_mission https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FutureE... Along with a video of how it was performed: https://dlmultimedia.esa.int/download/public/videos/2023/07/042/2307_042_AR_EN.mp4 https://dlmultimedia.esa.int/download/public/videos/2023/07/...
- lijaf 3y agoDo these satellites typically have such a seemingly short life?
- NamTaf 3y agoThat's what struck me most from this article too! 3 years?! That's a huge capital investment for very little service life. I had naively expected at least something like 10 years, even in LEO.
- SiempreViernes 3y agoSort of, Aeolus was a technology demonstrator and it had a intended lifetime of three years, which it surpassed. Other Earth Explorer missions have had similar lifetimes, but many have had much longer... I think since these are all very experimental things getting the up and working to prove the technology is the main thing, how long they make it past that is sort of random.
- denzil 3y agoThe satellite orbited at 320 km. At that altitude the atmosphere drag is non-negligible, so it had to burn fuel to stay there. So the life was limited by how much fuel it had and that is limited by launch vehicle capabilities. If the launch cost get lower, I imagine refueling might become option, but we are not there yet (except for ISS, but that is different case).
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y agoThe laser technology for space-based winds measurement is very difficult to make work in space. The requirements on materials, optics, and power dissipation are daunting. This was a technology demonstrator to show that it had a chance of working and it succeeded.
- kvetching 3y agonevermind the fact that boats are in the Atlantic and could be struck
- iam-TJ 3y agoThat is why we have Navigation Warnings: 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
- KolmogorovComp 3y agoThe article states the on-launch weight of it was 1,360kg, but what would have been interesting to know is the expected weight of debris that would reach the surface.
- sidewndr46 3y agodidn't Galileo do this quite a while back: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/galileo-probe/in-depth/#:~:text=Because%20Galileo%20had%20not%20been,Jupiter's%20moons%20such%20as%20Europa https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/galileo-probe/in-depth.... ?
- nkozyra 3y agoPer the text, no, it was not guided to a controlled crash on earth (or in this case a planet/ moon)
- dotnet00 3y agoI'm not really getting what makes this a world first? 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.
- patrickwalton 3y agoI think the other "first" was that the system wasn't designed for controlled re-entry. They just used re-purposed the orbit maintenance propulsion system.
- rzimmerman 3y agoI’m fairly confident this is not a first. It’s just good behavior if you have a defunct but controlable satellite in low earth orbit. A best-effort burn to deplete fuel and aim for an ocean is an obvious choice. While it’s interesting, it is not novel and I think the reporter over-sensationalized here.
- dtgriscom 3y agoI can't imagine how it must feel for the engineers who put their talent into this wonderful machine to have to contribute to its demise. I remember watching a video from the Cash For Clunkers program back in 2009 [0], where they replaced an engine's oil with sodium silicate and then ran it until the engine was destroyed [1]. Rationale of the program aside, it was so sad seeing a car being deliberately killed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0IcIxhd8ks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0IcIxhd8ks
- VWWHFSfQ 3y agoHuman emotions are weird. People get super attached to things for strange reasons. > it was so sad seeing a car being deliberately killed. like this
- JoeDaDude 3y agoThis might be a good time to enjoy the ESA film on the necessity of cleaning up space junk, A Journey to Earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT7typHkpVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT7typHkpVg
- coolhand2120 3y agoIf the area above the earth is many orders of magnitude larger than the earth’s oceans, and the oceans are vast in the extreme, what really are the chances of a collision given the relatively small amount of debris in orbit? One can easily find a debris map online. Compared to say “ships in the ocean” the number of “satellites in orbit” must be tiny. And the ships exist on a 2D surface, so are that much more likely to collide. With 3D to move in and such a vast area, what is the actual risk? To be clear I’m not saying there is no risk and I know about cascading debris collapse. I just doubt the whole thing, I’d really like to know if anyone has done the math here.
- skinner927 3y agoOrbits degrade over time. A defunct satellite out of propellant has no guarantees to “stay in its lane”. Space debris are already an issue and we’ve only been putting things in space ~66 years. Imagine if every ship to ever sail was still afloat and never sank. We’d have thousands of unmanned, uncontrollable vessels ping-ponging around the ocean.
- Rebelgecko 3y agoThe number of satellites is less than the number of oceangoing ships, but satellites are on track to be ahead in the next decade or so. Then if you start counting every single piece of debris a satellite can run into, you're looking at millions of objects. Unlike ships, the debris (and even many satellites) doesn't have anyone "on watch" and there's no way to steer out of the way at the last minute. Because of how orbits work you can't really organize traffic into "shipping lanes". If you want to do the math yourself, NORAD publishes satellite orbital parameters, which can be used to look for potential conjunctions. You can also sign up for an account at https://www.space-track.org https://www.space-track.org to see the Space Force's data, or CelesTrak for something similar that isn't login-walled (https://celestrak.org/SOCRATES/ https://celestrak.org/SOCRATES/). The tl;dr is that it's not rare for 2 satellites (or a satellite+debris) to have a 1 in 10,000 chance of crashing into each other. As more and more satellites go up and more and more "1 in 10,000" events happen on a daily basis, more conjunctions will occur. Each conjunction can create thousands of pieces of debris, which exacerbates the problem- nowadays I think ~30% of all debris in LEO comes from China's 2007 ASAT test.