ESA's ERS-2 satellite began to come apart earlier than predicted The European Space Agency's ERS-2 satellite has re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. While no damage to property was reported, some impressive shots were taken of the spacecraft starting to buckle as it approached re-entry. The images were taken by the German Fraunhofer Institute for High Energy Physics and Radar Techniques and …
Given the number of satellites that will eventually perform a 'a controlled re-entry', this article is of potential interest.
Link here (English language): https://www.fhr.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/2024/The-TIRA-space-observation-radar-accompanied-the-re-entry-of-the-ERS-2-satellite.html
Three images showing degradation of the solar array. rather low resolution, but quite interesting.
After an extremely successful mission and nearly 30 years in orbit, ESA's ERS-2 entered the atmosphere on February 21, 2024, at around 6:17 p.m. CET (5:17 p.m. UTC). Prior to that, researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques (FHR) had measured the ESA satellite several times for about a week. The last images of ERS-2 tumbling through the sky were recorded by the 34-meter antenna system of TIRA around 8:00 a.m. CET on February 21, about 10 orbits before re-entry. Interestingly, the solar panels of ERS-2 appear to be already bent and partially detached from the rest of the satellite at that time. "In our data, we can see a clear bend in the solar panels on the one hand, and artifacts that could be caused by rapid uncontrolled 'fluttering' on the other hand," says Felix Rosebrock, radar expert at Fraunhofer FHR. "This is particularly remarkable since changes to the structure were captured in images for the first time during re-entry."
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