{"id":229039,"date":"2025-12-12T10:30:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T10:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/229039\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T10:30:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T10:30:09","slug":"draco-atmospheric-reentry-from-the-inside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/229039\/","title":{"rendered":"Draco: atmospheric reentry from the inside"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the nearly 70 years of spaceflight, about 10 000 intact satellites and rocket bodies have reentered the atmosphere with many more to follow. Yet for such a ubiquitous event, we still lack a clear view on what actually happens to a satellite during its fiery last moments.<\/p>\n<p>ESA is preparing the Destructive Reentry Assessment Container Object (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/Space_Safety\/Draco_mission_made_for_destruction\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Draco<\/a>) mission that will collect unique measurements during an actual reentry and breakup of a satellite from the inside.<\/p>\n<p>Just hours after its launch, planned in 2027, a capsule especially designed to survive the satellite\u2019s destruction will transmit the collected telemetry shortly after.<\/p>\n<p>As part of ESA\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/Space_Safety\/Clean_Space\/ESA_s_Zero_Debris_approach\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Zero Debris approach<\/a>, new ESA missions will be designed for safe operations and disposal to stop the creation of new debris by 2030.\u00a0New satellites should be \u2018designed for demise\u2019: built to disintegrate safely, cleanly and completely when its mission ends.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, we also need to better understand the effect of satellite reentries on the atmosphere. Yet even with testing on the ground, crucial input based on real-life data of how the break-up process works is missing \u2013 for now.<\/p>\n<p>The data from ESA\u2019s Draco mission will improve reentry modelling and design-for-demise technologies, maintaining European leadership in sustainable spaceflight.<\/p>\n<p>Click <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Videos\/2025\/12\/Draco_atmospheric_reentry_from_the_inside\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> for the subtitled version of the video.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tEmbed code<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the nearly 70 years of spaceflight, about 10 000 intact satellites and rocket bodies have reentered the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,19,17,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-229039","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115706136278719225","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}