Bengaluru, March 7
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.
The low Earth satellite was launched on October 12, 2011, as a joint satellite venture of ISRO and the French space agency, CNES for tropical weather and climate studies.
An uninhabited area in the Pacific Ocean between 5°S to 14°S latitude and 119°W to 100°W longitude was identified as the targeted re-entry zone for MT1, weighing about 1000 kg, ISRO said earlier this week.
About 125 kg on-board fuel remained unutilised at its end-of-mission that could pose risks for accidental break-up, an ISRO statement had noted.
This left-over fuel was estimated to be sufficient to achieve a fully controlled atmospheric re-entry to impact the uninhabited location in the Pacific Ocean, ISRO had said.
Controlled re-entries involve deorbiting to very low altitudes to ensure impact occurs within a targeted safe zone.
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