A European satellite has crashed back to Earth today; according to a brief statement released by the European Space Agency (ESA), the ERS-2 Earth-observing satellite crashed in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Alaska at 7:17 am Hawaii Time / 12:17 pm ET. While most of it was expected to burn-up in a fiery re-entry through the Earth’s atmosphere, it is not known if any remnants reached the surface. The re-entry occurred within 5 minutes of the last updated crash forecast.
The ERS-2 Earth observing satellite was launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in April 1995. Together with its nearly identical ERS-1 satellite, it captured important data on land, oceans, and ice and even was used to monitor natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods around the globe. At the end of its service life, ESA made the decision to end the satellite operations and de-orbit the satellite.
In the time since the decision was made to re-orbit the aging satellite, dozens or de-orbiting maneuvers were performed by ESA mission operators. According to ESA, de-orbiting satellites at the end of their life ensures that the satellites or their remnants burn-up in the Earth’s atmosphere rather than pose hazards to other orbiting spacecraft or become additional space debris to an increasingly congested area above Earth in space.
“ERS-2 used up the last of its fuel in 2011 in order to minimize the risk of a catastrophic explosion that could have generated a large amount of space debris,” ESA shared in an update on the status of the falling satellite. “Its batteries were depleted and its communication antenna and onboard electronics were switched off. There is no longer any way to actively control the motion of the satellite from the ground during its descent.”
There was concern that the European satellite could create harm on the Earth’s surface; it has happened before. While the chances are extremely low –ESA says the annual risk of an individual person being injured by space debris is under 1 in 100 billion– the chances are not zero.
While the odds of being struck by this satellite and its debris field were extremely remote, a person has been struck by space debris before –and lived to talk about it. In January 1977, Lottie Williams and two friends were walking through a park in Tulsa, Oklahoma around 3:30 am when they saw a huge fireball streaking from the skies.
In an interview with FoxNews.com, Williams said, ” We were stunned, in awe. It was beautiful.” Less than thirty minutes later, that awe turned to fear. “We were still walking through the park when I felt a tapping on my shoulder,” Williams explained. With no one near her at the time, she started to run, thinking a stranger had appeared out of the shadows. Then she heard something hit the ground behind her. “The weight was comparable to an empty soda can,” Williams told FoxNews.com. “It looked like a piece of fabric except when you tap it, it sounded metallic.”
Williams was sure she’d found a piece of a shooting star. Assuming it was a piece of a shooting star, Williams brought the unusual object to her local library. There, she was referred to a local astronomy club and to the National Weather Service. The National Weather Service had informed her that a Delta II rocket had re-entered the atmosphere the night before. Additional testing of the debris proved it was indeed from the Delta II rocket.
The European Space Agency provided frequent live updates on the status of the ERS-2 re-entry at this website: https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2024/02/05/ers-2-reentry-live-updates/
