Source : India Today
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Tuesday successfully de-orbited a satellite after its end of mission. Megha Trophiques-1 was brought down from its orbit as it disintegrated and burned up in the skies above the Pacific Ocean.
The controlled re-entry experiment for the decommissioned Megha-Tropiques-1 (MT-1) was carried out successfully on March 7, 2023.
The satellite has re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and would have disintegrated over the Pacific Ocean. pic.twitter.com/UIAcMjXfAH
— ISRO (@isro) March 7, 2023
Isro tweeted, “The controlled re-entry experiment for the decommissioned Megha-Tropiques-1 (MT-1) was carried out successfully on March 7, 2023.”
Megha-Tropiques-1 was launched into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) on October 12, 2011, as a joint mission developed by Isro and the French space agency, CNES, for tropical weather and climate studies. The mission was initially planned to operate for three years, but it was extended later as it continued to deliver key data about the climate for a decade.
Isro crashed the satellite as part of its commitment to the United Nations Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (UNIADC) following the end of the mission life. The UN guidelines state that at its end-of-life the satellite should be deorbited, preferably through controlled re-entry to a safe impact zone, or by bringing it to an orbit where the orbital lifetime is less than 25 years.
India has been vocal about the issues of space junk surrounding Earth and how it has made observations difficult and even increased the risk of collisions in zero gravity.
