Satellites don’t live forever.
When their missions are over, some of them linger in orbit as space junk.
The lucky ones fall back to Earth and are destroyed in the atmosphere.
Researchers captured rare views of the satellite shortly before its fiery demise.
Aeolus launched in 2018 with an instrument on board that measured Earth’s winds on a global scale.
“These observations improved weather forecasts and climate models,“ESA said.
The satellite spent nearly five years in orbit and came back down on July 28.
On Tuesday,ESA releaseda ghostly sequence of images showing Aeolus as it began to tumble through the atmosphere.
The images come from aradar antenna at the Fraunhofer Institutein Germany.
“The color in these final images represents the radar echo intensity and not temperature,“said ESA.
Technically, Aeolus was considered space debris for a few hours before it burned up.
Aeolus was designed back in the 1990s before a lot of attention was paid to theproblem of space junk.
Defunct space missions ranging from dead satellites to spent rocket bodies are clogging up orbit around Earth.
Space trash can create hazards for operating missions, both robotic and crewed.
The International Space Station, for example, has tododge space junkon occasion.
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ESA now designs satellites with debris mitigation in mind.
The Aeolus team pulled off a complex set of maneuvers to lower the satellite’s orbit.
The radar antenna was able to track the satellite for around four minutes.
The data helped ESA determine an accurate reentry path and time.
The satellite safely burned up over an uninhabited area of Antarctica about two hours later.
If any debris fell to the ground, it wouldn’t have impacted human lives or dwellings.
