Cluster II spacecraft reenters and burns up with a nod to its controllers

The European Space Agency (ESA) has bid farewell to the Cluster II spacecraft with a final set of commands to show that engineers are indeed human. The four spacecraft have long been set for reentry, starting with Satellite 2, aka Salsa. The reentry occurred on Sunday, September 8, as planned. However, the mission controllers …

[Anonymous Coward]

Without intervention, the spacecraft could have reentered anywhere ...

Well done ESA !

Kudos to all the members of the Cluster team (past and present) for a job well done.

.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Something in my eye is right.

I'm just lucky I'm sitting alone in my office.

High five, ESA.

[Raha]

Reentry observed

Pretty sure I saw part of this over Southern Arizona at around 5am 9-9-24. Saw a very bright streak across the ski looking towards the East.

[Bill Gray]

Re: Reentry observed

That wouldn't have been it. Re-entry was carefully targeted to be over the South Pacific, in an area far from land.

Thus far, it's still the case that when you see something that looks like a meteor, odds are very good that it really is a meteor rather than re-entering junk.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Reentry observed

Or one of 1000's of Starlink sats :-)

Was watching one of those lets identify/debunk UFO sightings shows the other day and the "contestants" were all emotional over the the "thing" they saw and when they finally showed the wobbly phone video, i says to my wife, "that's a Starlink cluster a day or so after launch". The debunker person even went so far as to tell them exactly which mission number it was. The "contestants" seemed so deflated afterwards :-)

[I am David Jones]

XKCD arguably did it best?

There’s no argument, of course it did!

See also: Opportunity (https://xkcd.com/1504/)