Image: ERS-2 buckles and bends during final farewell

Following a massively profitable mission and virtually 30 years in orbit, ESA’s ERS-2 reentered Earth’s environment at roughly 18:17 CET (17:17 UTC) on 21 February 2024.

Predicting the precise time and site of ERS-2’s pure reentry was made harder by the dearth of latest observations of the satellite throughout its last revolutions round Earth.

This GIF combines among the last pictures of ERS-2 tumbling by means of the sky. They had been captured by the Monitoring and Imaging Radar (TIRA) on the Fraunhofer Institute for Excessive-Frequency Physics and Radar Methods FHR in Germany.

TIRA’s 34-m antenna tracked the satellite because it handed overhead for a couple of minutes on 19, 20, and 21 February. The ultimate session came about round 8:00 CET on 21 February, nonetheless roughly 10 orbits earlier than reentry.

By evaluating the images from the three TIRA monitoring classes, we will see that ERS-2’s solar array was already coming unfastened and now not firmly hooked up to the remainder of the satellite the day earlier than re-entry.

When predicting a satellite’s reentry trajectory, specialists deal with it as one inflexible object till virtually the very finish. If ERS-2’s solar array was unfastened and shifting independently a day early, it could have brought about the satellite to work together with the environment in methods we didn’t count on.

Consultants are actually analyzing the info. If the buckling of the solar array is expounded to the truth that ERS-2’s reentry came about barely later than predicted, this analysis may assist enhance our forecasts of future pure reentries.