New images from HEO Robotics, an Australian commercial imaging company, show the ERS-2 (short for European Remote Sensing 2) satellite approaching Earth's atmosphere. The images were taken between January and February by cameras mounted on other satellites in orbit.
The images were taken when ERS-2 was at an altitude of more than 300 km. Since then, it has been at an altitude of about 20 kilometers, and falling more than 10 kilometers a day.
The satellite belongs to the European Space Agency (ESA) and is supposed to re-enter the atmosphere on Wednesday (21) at 12:19 pm Brasilia time. However, there is a 19-hour uncertainty in this forecast.
According to the European Space Agency, much of this uncertainty is due to the influence of solar activity, which is unpredictable and can affect the density of the Earth's atmosphere. As a result, the clouds of atmospheric gases on the satellite may increase. Something like this happened in 2022, when 40 SpaceX Starlink satellites re-entered after a solar storm.
It's still too early to say exactly when ERS-2 will reenter the atmosphere, but rest assured: when it's at an altitude of about 80 kilometers, the satellite should break up into small pieces and most of them will burn up in the atmosphere. If any of them resisted, they were bound to fall into the ocean.
ERS-2 was launched in 1995, and ESA explained that it “was the most advanced Earth observation spacecraft ever developed and launched by Europe.” Together with ERS-1, ERS-2 has spent more than 10 years collecting data on declining ice at Earth's poles, rising ocean levels and more, and has also worked to monitor natural disasters.
source: European Space Agency
