UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
FACULTY OF PHYSICS

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2024-11-22 1:34
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Conference: Bucharest University Faculty of Physics 2024 Meeting


Section: Atmosphere and Earth Science; Environment Protection


Title:
Re-entry survivability analysis of ERS-2 satellite


Authors:
Cristian OMAT (1, 2), Mirel BIRLAN (1, 2), Vlad TURCU (2, 3)


*
Affiliation:
1) University of Bucharest, Faculty of Physics, 405 Atomistilor Street, 077125 Măgurele, Ilfov, Romania


2) Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy, 5 Cuțitul de Argint Street, 052034 Bucharest, Romania


3) Astronomical Observatory of Cluj Napoca, Feleacu, Romanian Academy



E-mail
cristian.omat@astro.ro


Keywords:
ERS-2, debris, decay, satellite, DAS, re-entry


Abstract:
During its operational period (April 29, 1996 to Sept 5, 2011), the ERS-2 satellite (European Remote Sensing Satellite) was placed into a Sun-synchronous polar retrograde orbit at 780 km mean altitude. This allow a 100 minutes orbital period at a speed of about 7.5 km per second (eoPortal, 2024). In September 5, 2011, after more than 5,500 operational days, the satellite altitude has been lowered from 780 km to 573 km, a common practice during end-of-life maneuvers to hasten its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. On February 21, 2024 the ERS-2 satellite completed its atmospheric re-entry over the North Pacific Ocean, somewhere between Alaska and Hawaii at approximately geographic coordinates: 37°24’00.0”N and 151°54’00.0”W, around 18:17 CET (17:17 UTC). During this phase astronomical observations has been recorded by Cluj-Napoca Observatory (Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy). According to the ESA’s predictions, the major breakup was possible at ”an altitude of roughly 80 km” (ESA, 2024). The major objectives of our work was to find out the value of major breakup altitude of the satellite, the demise altitude or a quantitative estimations of the probability of hitting the sea surface for components which have survived the re-entry phase. For this scope, we modeled the atmospheric re-entry of ERS-2 using Debris Assessment Software (DAS). Results of the re-entry phase of the ERS-2 satellite are presented.


References:

eoPortal: 2024, https://www.eoportal.org.

ESA: 2024, https://www.esa.int/.



Acknowledgement:
The work use observations facilities of the Astronomical Observatory of Cluj-Napoca, Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy