Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) has announced the successful deorbiting of the 3.5 kg. CanX-7 demonstration smallsat using drag sail technology designed to reduce the time retired smallsats spend in orbit as space debris. CanX-7 burned up in Earth’s atmosphere in May, just five years after drag sail deployment and roughly 178 years before the satellite […]
Deorbit
South Africa’s SunbandilaSat Heading For Deorbit + Re-Entry Burn Up
The South African satellite SumbandilaSat (Pathfinder in Venda) is reaching the end of its life and initiated deorbit procedures on Friday, December 10, 2021. The satellite was launched in 2009 and captured a total of 1,128 high-resolution, usable images. The image data was applied in local research and on the Copernicus (previously GMES: Global Monitoring […]
Europe’s First Polar-Orbiting Weather Satellite Successfully Deorbited
Europe’s first meteorological satellite in polar orbit, Metop-A, has been successfully deorbited by Europe’s meteorological satellite agency, EUMETSAT, with support from Airbus. Starting immediately, the satellite will spiral downward in progressively lower orbits until it disintegrates upon re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, a process that is expected to end within the next 25 years, in accordance […]