Tuesday will see the mission's final satellite crash, according to the Indian Space Research Organization (Isro). After serving for more than ten years, the Megha-Tropiques-1 (MT1) will re-enter Earth's atmosphere and burn in the sky.
Megha-Tropiques-1, a collaborative mission created by Isro and the French space agency CNES for tropical weather and climate investigations, was launched into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) on October 12, 2011. The mission was initially only supposed to run for three years, but it was later extended since it kept sending vital climate data for ten years.
According to a statement from Isro, the satellite has been providing beneficial data services for over ten years and will continue to support regional and global climate models through 2021.
As part of its responsibility to the United Nations Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (UNIADC) after the mission's life is up, Isro is crashing the satellite. According to UN recommendations, the satellite should be deorbited at the end of its useful life, preferably via controlled re-entry into a safe impact zone or by placing it in an orbit with an orbital lifetime of fewer than 25 years.
The alternative was to leave it permanently in orbit where it could continue to degrade. But, in that scenario, MT1, which weighs around 1000 kg, would have had an orbital lifetime of more than 100 years in its 20-degree-inclined operating orbit at an altitude of 867 km. Isro must de-orbit the spacecraft because it still has around 125 kg of fuel within that could accidentally break apart.
According to Isro, there should be enough fuel left enough to achieve a properly controlled atmospheric re-entry. Deorbiting to extremely low altitudes is required for controlled re-entries to make sure the impact occurs inside a predetermined safe zone.
"To reduce the potential of ground casualties, big satellites and rocket bodies that are likely to survive aero-thermal breakup during re-entry undergo controlled re-entry. Yet, all of these satellites are created expressly to perform a controlled re-entry at the end of their useful lives "Isro furthermore.
