ISRO successfully carries out controlled re-entry experiment of aged satellite

The Indian Space Research Organisation said it successfully carried out an "extremely challenging" controlled re-entry experiment of the decommissioned orbiting Megha-Tropiques-1 (MT-1) satellite on Tuesday. "The satellite re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and would have disintegrated over the Pacific Ocean," the Bengaluru-headquartered national space agency said on Twitter.

isro: ISRO successfully carries out controlled re-entry experiment of aged satellite - The Economic Times

"MT1 was not designed for EOL (end of life) operations through controlled re-entry which made the entire exercise extremely challenging", ISRO said.

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.

Innovative workarounds were implemented by the operations team based on the study, deliberations, and exchanges among the mission, operations, flight dynamics, aerodynamics, propulsion, controls, navigation, thermal, and other sub-system design teams across the ISRO centres, who worked in synergy to surmount these challenges.

"As a responsible space agency committed to safe and sustainable operations in outer space, ISRO proactively takes efforts for better compliance with the UN/ IADC space debris mitigation guidelines on post-mission disposal of LEO objects," an ISRO statement said.

The re-entry experiment of MT1 has been undertaken as a part of the ongoing efforts as this satellite with sufficient left-over fuel presented a unique opportunity to test the relevant methodologies and understand the associated operational nuances of post mission disposal by direct re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, it was stated.