A giant European telecommunications satellite was destroyed above the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday morning, just two weeks after a failed launch left it stranded in a useless orbit.
The Astra 1K satellite was launched on 26 November from the Baikonur spaceport in central Asia aboard a Russian Proton K rocket. But the rocket鈥檚 Blok-D Upper Stage did not perform two final firings, leaving the spacecraft in an orbit just 175 kilometres above the Earth. The satellite should have been propelled into geostationary orbit, 36,000 kilometres high.
The satellite鈥檚 owner, SES Astra, briefly considered a dramatic rescue attempt using an untested 鈥渟pace-tug鈥�. The vehicle, proposed by US company Orbital Recovery, would attach to a marooned spacecraft and boost it to a higher orbit using its own propulsion system.
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But a statement from SES Astra on Tuesday said: 鈥淒ue to the rapid degradation of the satellite, coupled to the technical difficulties and risks associated with such a mission, a commercial in-orbit recovery is not a viable option for the spacecraft, which was stranded in a low-Earth orbit.鈥�
Airways cleared
The satellite鈥檚 manufacturer, Alcatel Space, deliberately brought Astra-1K down over the Pacific at 0200 GMT, with tracking assistance provided by the French Space Agency, CNES.
It was the largest telecommunications satellite ever built in Europe, weighing 5.25 tonnes. Some experts had warned that large pieces of debris might survive re-entry into the Earth鈥檚 atmosphere.
But SES Astra says: 鈥淎irways and sea lanes were cleared by the New Zealand authorities, no damage was reported.鈥�
The satellite would have come down soon after launch if its limited on-board propulsion system had not been used to fire it up to an orbit of about 300 kilometres. This action gave the satellite鈥檚 owners time to consider whether it was economically and technically feasible to save the satellite, or whether it had to be destroyed to prevent it falling on an inhabited area.