India’s RISAT-2 re-enters earth after 13.5 years, lands near Jakarta: ISRO

RISAT-2 was launched on 20 April 2009 by PSLV-C12 launch vehicle. It weighted only about 300 kg and landed at around 12.06 am (IST).

For an initial designed life of 4 years, RISAT-2 Satellite carried 30 Kg fuel. On re-entry, there were no fuel left in the satellite and hence there are no contaminations or explosion by fuel is expected, confirmed ISRO.

“RISAT-2 was launched on 20 April 2009 by PSLV-C12 launch vehicle in an inclined eccentric orbit of 41.2deg inclination with Perigee altitude 400 Km and Apogee altitude 550 Km. Weighing only about 300 kg, the satellite has now made an uncontrolled re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere at the predicted impact point in Indian Ocean near Jakarta on 30th October 2022 00:06 UTC with an uncertainty of ±10 minutes,” ISRO statement said.

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Studies confirmed that the pieces generated due to aero-thermal fragmentation would not have survived re-entry heating and hence no fragments would have impacted on Earth.

For the last one month, Indian System for Safe and Sustainable Space Operations Management (IS4OM) facility in ISTRAC/ISRO had been monitoring the re-entry with analysis carried out by VSSC and ISTRAC teams through its in-house developed analysis software and tracking the object utilizing Multi Object Tracking Radar (MOTR) at SDSC, Sriharikota.

Apart from this, MOTR tracked RISAT-2 regularly and the data were used for further analysis and Orbit determination.

As RISAT-2 re-entered within 13.5 years, it complied with all necessary international mitigation guidelines for Space Debris, showing ISRO’s commitment towards long term sustainability of Outer Space as well, ISRO said.