The latest images of a doomed satellite, which seems straight out of Star Wars and is expected to crash into Earth next week, have been captured.
The UK’s Space Agency announced it is being watchful before the impact and working alongside the HEO satellite tracking firm observing the rogue satellite.
Scientists are clueless about where this European Remote Sensing 2 satellite (ERS-2) would touch down. The prediction for an uncontrolled reentry into the atmosphere of this satellite as shared by ESA (European Space Agency) on Friday is on Wednesday (February 21) at 12:10pm but this forecast has a leeway time of about 27 hours either side.
Captured by other satellites between 14 January and 3 February, these images show ERS-2 in its rotational journey back towards Earth, courtesy of HEO an Australian business with a UK office.
Sharing these images with ESA, the UK’s Space Agency assists in monitoring ERS-2’s re-entry. Today, the UK Space Agency updates that it operates “the UK’s re-entry warning service and has tasked our UK sensors to observe the re-entry of ERS-2.”
The government’s space debris re-entry service can issue warnings if a possible crisis comes up while watching for incoming threats.
The UK Space Agency proudly remarked on their re-entry service: “Our orbital analysts use UK developed state-of-the art modelling to monitor re-entering objects and produce re-entry warnings if it is a UK-licensed object re-entering, or if the UK or our overseas territories/crown dependencies might be affected.”
Widely shared alerts are made: “These warnings are distributed to civil protection authorities in the UK as well as overseas government departments.”
It’s an ongoing project too! “Our re-entry service, alongside our in-orbit collision and fragmentation service (known as our Space Surveillance and Tracking service) runs 365 days a year.”
Angus Stewart, who is in charge of Space Surveillance and Tracking at the UK Space Agency, added: “There are thousands of operational and defunct satellites in orbit around the Earth, and the ability to operate safely in space and bring the benefits back to Earth is growing increasingly challenging.”
Mr Stewart also mentioned work with agency HEO and details on observing ERS-2 re-entry: “As well as capturing these images as part of our work with HEO, the UK Space Agency operates the UK’s re-entry warning service and has tasked our UK sensors to observe the re-entry of ERS-2.”
Sharing helps everyone: “We share data with ESA and other international partners through the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) and other forums to support satellite re-entries.”
HEO chimed in with the aim of their work: “The objective is to understand how Non-earth Imagery can improve re-entry predictions by reducing uncertainties on the object re-entering, as well as better understand the nature of re-entering objects.”
“This is particularly important for uncontrolled or poorly characterised objects, such as large space debris objects that may no longer be intact.”
The UK Space Agency has said that UK scientists and engineers from places like Airbus, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxford University, the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, and the Met Office helped make and create the instruments for the satellite that didn’t work out.
ESA calls the ERS-2 reentry ‘natural’ because they can’t steer the satellite anymore. The only thing making ERS-2’s path fall apart is atmospheric drag, which changes with solar activity that we can’t predict.
