Speaker
Description
At the end of its mission lifetime, Aeolus was designed to reenter in an uncontrolled approach. Aeolus did not have to comply to ESA’s Space Debris Mitigation Policy, since its SRR was held before the entry into force of such Policy.
A Working Group was set up by ESA, involving ESA and industry experts, with the objective to explore alternative ways to reenter and reduce the casualty risk, which was known to be above the current policy threshold (i.e. 1 over 10,000)
The Working Group recommended a solution based on an assisted approach which was adopted by ESA executive and by its delegation bodies. The satellite reentered successfully on the 28th of July @18:46 UTC.
The objective of this presentation is to present the outcome of the reentry, the main challenges faced during the assisted reentry and the solutions adopted.
