Space Stories: Satellite Returns to Earth, Watching the Moon Landing, and Kuiper Belt Surprises

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Earth Remote Sensing satellite. (ESA/dpa/picture alliance)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—BBC: “Pioneering European ERS-2 Satellite Burns Up Over Pacific“

The two-tonne ERS-2 spacecraft burnt up in the atmosphere over the Pacific. So far, there have been no eyewitness accounts of the mission’s demise or of any debris reaching Earth’s surface. ERS-2 was one of a pair of missions launched by the European Space Agency in the 1990s to study the atmosphere, the land and the oceans in novel ways. The duo monitored floods, measured continental and ocean-surface temperatures, traced the movement of ice fields, and sensed the ground buckle during earthquakes.

—Forbes: “NASA To Live-Stream Spacecraft Odie’s Moon Landing Thursday. Here’s How To Watch“

Houston-based Intuitive Machines is targeting 5:49 p.m. EST on Thursday, February 22, to put its Odysseus lunar lander on the surface of the moon—and it will be streamed live on NASA TV on YouTube. The first U.S. commercial moon lander, Odysseus—also known by its nickname “Odie”—will touchdown near a crater called Malapert A in the south pole region of the moon. If successful, this IM-1 mission—which is taking a scientific payload to the moon—will be the first spacecraft from the U.S. to land on the moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972.

—Science Alert: “NASA’s New Horizons Discovered a Large Surprise in The Kuiper Belt“

There may be a lot more than we thought to the belt of icy debris that circles the outer Solar System. Data from the New Horizons probe as it sails serenely through the Kuiper Belt hints at unexpected levels of particles where dust ought to be thinning out, suggesting the donut-shaped field extends significantly farther from the Sun than previous estimates suggest.