Salsa's orbit was tweaked in January to ensure it would experience a steep drop from approximately 110 km to 80 km on September 8. This gives us the greatest possible control over where the spacecraft will be captured by the atmosphere and begin to burn up."
We covered the Cluster mission during our Space Extenders series. Then, the team was celebrating being 20 years into a two-year mission. We spoke to Sousa who explained that by careful maintenance of the batteries, engineers were able to eke out extra life from the spacecraft, but, at the ten-year point, "it became a mission where we did not have any more battery."
Some have referred to Cluster as the 'zombie spacecraft' because when the satellites pass into eclipse, they must completely shut down and revive when the Sun shines on their solar arrays. Clever work by the engineering crew ensured the shutdown and recovery process were automated as much as possible.
The four identical Cluster spacecraft were designed to fly in formation to study the Earth's magnetosphere, which protects the Earth from particles emitted by the Sun. The science produced by the mission has proven invaluable in understanding 'space weather' and the mission has received extension after extension.
Collection
[
|
...
]