The Megha-Tropiques-1 is a joint Indo-French satellite launched in 2011 for tropical climate and local weather research. Photo: ceres.larc.nasa.gov
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) might be endeavor a difficult experiment of a controlled re-entry of the decommissioned Megha-Tropiques-1 (MT1) satellite on March 7.
The MT1 is a joint Indo-French satellite launched in 2011 for tropical climate and local weather research which was offering information companies, supporting regional and world local weather fashions until 2021.
The area company on Sunday mentioned that as a accountable area company dedicated to protected and sustainable operations within the outer area it was gearing up for this difficult experiment.
The ISRO mentioned that the United Nations/Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee area particles mitigation tips really useful deorbiting a Low Earth Orbit object at its end-of-life, ideally by controlled re-entry to a protected influence zone, or by bringing it to an orbit the place the orbital lifetime was lower than 25 years.
The tips additionally really useful to perform passivation of on-board power sources to minimise the danger of any post-mission unintended break-up.
“The orbital lifetime of MT1, weighing about 1,000 kg, would have been more than 100 years in its 20 deg inclined operational orbit of 867 km altitude. About 125 kg on-board fuel remained unutilised at its end-of-mission that could pose risks for accidental break-up. This left-over fuel was estimated to be sufficient to achieve a fully controlled atmospheric re-entry to impact an uninhabited location in the Pacific Ocean. Controlled re-entries involve deorbiting to very low altitudes to ensure impact occurs within a targeted safe zone,” the ISRO mentioned.
Limiting floor casualty threat
The ISRO additional mentioned that often, massive satellites and rocket our bodies which had been probably to survive aero-thermal fragmentation upon re-entry had been made to bear controlled re-entry to restrict floor casualty threat.
“However, all such satellites are specifically designed to undergo controlled re-entry at end-of-life. MT1 was not designed for end-of-life operations through controlled re-entry which made the entire exercise extremely challenging. Furthermore, the on-board constraints of the aged satellite, where several systems had lost redundancy and showed degraded performance, and maintaining subsystems under harsher environmental conditions at much lower than originally designed orbital altitude added to the operational complexities,” the ISRO mentioned.
An uninhabited space within the Pacific Ocean between 5°S to 14°S latitude and 119°W to 100°W longitude has been recognized because the focused re-entry zone for the MT1.
Since Aug 2022, 18 orbit manoeuvres have been carried out to progressively decrease the orbit and on March 7 the bottom influence is predicted to happen between 4.30 p.m. and seven.30 p.m. IST.
