![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited.png\" "\\"\\"")
ESA<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
The reentry comes after a series of complex manoeuvres that lowered Aeolus\u2019 orbit from an altitude of 320 km to just 120 km to reenter the atmosphere and burn up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Crucially, these manoeuvres \u2013 the first assisted reentry of its kind \u2013 positioned Aeolus so that any pieces that may not have burned up in the atmosphere would fall within the satellite\u2019s planned Atlantic ground tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, satellite missions are designed according to regulations that require them to minimise the risk of causing damage on their return to Earth. This would typically be achieved by the majority of the satellite burning up on reentry or through a controlled reentry at the end of their lives in orbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, when Aeolus was designed back in the late 1990s no such regulations were in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, after running out of fuel and without intervention, Aeolus would have reentered Earth\u2019s atmosphere naturally within a few weeks from now \u2013 but with no control over where this would happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Satellites and rocket parts fall back to Earth roughly once a week<\/a>, and pieces that survive have only very rarely caused any damage, so the risk of Aeolus causing harm was always incredibly small. In fact, the chance of being struck by a piece of debris is three times less than being struck by a meteorite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, ESA went above and beyond for Aeolus and attempted a new way of assisting its reentry to make it even safer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Essentially trying to make a satellite do what it was never designed to do involved a huge amount of thinking and a lot of planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, over the last week, the team of spacecraft engineers, flight dynamics experts and space debris specialists at ESA\u2019s ESOC mission control centre in Germany set to work. They used the satellite\u2019s remaining fuel to carry out a series of burns to lower Aeolus and place it into the best position to reenter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And they pulled it off \u2013 with Aeolus reentering in line with current regulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ESA\u2019s Director of Operations, Rolf Densing, said, \u201cThe teams have achieved something remarkable. These manoeuvres were complex, and Aeolus was not designed to perform them, and there was always a possibility that this first attempt at an assisted reentry might not work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Aeolus reentry was always going to be very low risk, but we wanted to push the boundaries and reduce the risk further, demonstrating our commitment to ESA\u2019s Zero Debris approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe have learned a great deal from this success and can potentially apply the same approach for some other satellites at the end of their lives, launched before the current disposal measures were in place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This assisted reentry is just one part of ESA\u2019s wider commitment to the long-term safety and sustainability of space activities. By 2030, all ESA missions will be \u2018debris neutral\u2019 \u2013 thanks to the Zero Debris Charter<\/a>, the Agency is making sure the technology is ready not just for present-day regulations, but to make possible even more ambitious rules for the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From deorbiting kits launched with missions to bring them down safely, to flagship missions like Clearspace-1 that will capture stranded spacecraft in orbit and technologies to limit risks on the ground, ESA is leading the way in sustainable space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aeolus: the impossible mission<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Aeolus has been a challenging mission \u2013 its pioneering laser technology took many years to develop. But after a number of setbacks, Aeolus was finally launched in 2018 to profile Earth\u2019s winds and went on to be one of ESA\u2019s most successful Earth observation research missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aeolus carried an instrument known as ALADIN, which is Europe\u2019s most sophisticated Doppler wind lidar flown in space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Its laser fired pulses of ultraviolet light towards Earth\u2019s atmosphere. This light bounced off air molecules and particles such as dust in the atmosphere. The small fraction of light that scattered back towards the satellite was collected by a large telescope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through the measurement of the Doppler shifts in the return signals, the horizontal speed of the wind in the lowermost 30 km of the atmosphere was derived, making Aeolus the first satellite mission to deliver profiles of Earth\u2019s wind on a global scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The mission, an ESA Earth Explorer research mission, was designed to demonstrate that this technology was feasible \u2013 but it did more than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ESA\u2019s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Simonetta Cheli, said, \u201cAeolus has been truly outstanding. Indeed, the technology was difficult to develop but we have seen huge returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt not only benefited science in terms of contributing to climate research, but its data were used operationally in weather forecasts, which proved essential during the Covid lockdown when aircraft, which carry weather instruments, were grounded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A 2022 report<\/a> by London Economics found that Aeolus also brought real economic benefits \u2013 as much as \u20ac3.5 billion over the lifetime of the mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are extremely proud of Aeolus and the many people who made its development, its life in orbit, its data use and its safe end possible. And now, with the experience gained from the first Aeolus, our focus turns to its follow-on, Aeolus-2, which is an operational meteorological mission we are developing with Eumetsat, Europe\u2019s Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Aeolus \u2013 ESA\u2019s wind mission \u2013 reentered Earth\u2019s atmosphere on 28 July at around 21:00 CEST above Antarctica, confirmed by US Space Command.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited.png",544,438,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited-200x200.png",200,200,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited-497x400.png",497,400,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited.png",544,438,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited.png",544,438,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited.png",544,438,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited.png",544,438,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited.png",544,438,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited.png",544,438,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited.png",544,438,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited.png",544,438,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited.png",544,438,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited-544x360.png",544,360,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited-95x65.png",95,65,true],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited.png",544,438,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited.png",96,77,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Aeolus-edited.png",150,121,false]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"Research<\/a> Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}