00:00 Now, a large satellite is descending back to Earth today, almost 30 years after it was
00:05 sent off on its mission. It is expected to come crashing down in an uncontrolled manner,
00:10 but the European Space Agency says there's almost zero chance it will hurt anyone. Well,
00:16 to tell us a bit more about that, to reassure us, perhaps Shirley Sitbon is with us. Shirley,
00:21 explain why we shouldn't be alarmed by this uncontrolled satellite descending back to
00:25 Earth today.
00:27 Because it's completely disintegrated. It was two tons at the beginning, but it started
00:31 its descent about, well, in 2011, actually, slowly, gradually, but this accelerated. And
00:38 now it's supposed to crash, to plunge into Earth this afternoon around four, you know,
00:44 in two or three hours, four hours tops, and basically just a few pieces still there. But
00:49 we can see what it looked like on these images. That's the model, of course. It doesn't look
00:55 like this anymore. But as it descended down to Earth, some other satellites were able
01:01 to spot it. And we can see one images. I have to tell you, it's very blurry. Even our friends
01:07 from the graphics department had to circle this. Other pictures are even worse than that.
01:12 So it's descending back to Earth this afternoon. And while it was very large to begin with,
01:19 we can see some other images of what disintegrations look like. Usually, these are images from
01:26 ESA, from other satellites which have descended back into Earth. The first one's filmed from
01:32 the International Space Station. This is filmed from actually the Earth, the surface of the
01:37 Earth. And it basically shows you that when a large object gets into the atmosphere, the
01:43 conditions are so extreme. It's so hot and the pressure is so high that it basically
01:50 burns down or it disintegrates. And the pieces are extremely small. Of course, when it comes
01:55 down to Earth, it will probably land in the ocean. That's what ESA says. That's what to
02:01 expect now. It's worth just reminding everybody what it's called. It's called ERS-2, this
02:07 satellite we're talking about. And it has been up there in space, Shirley, for nearly
02:10 30 years now. So what's it been doing this whole time?
02:14 Yes, many things. It's basically a pioneer, an ancestor of today's satellites. It started
02:20 this monitoring of the Earth, of global warming, climate change. And these images are from
02:27 1995 when it was launched. We have these images from the space station with Ariane Espace.
02:36 Unfortunately, we don't have the actual takeoff of ERS-2. We have the takeoff of ERS-1, which
02:43 was part of the greater mission. And actually, that satellite, which will be right, which
02:48 is taking off right now, it was a few years earlier. Well, it was not as successful because
02:53 it never came back to Earth. They weren't able, you know, that ESA tried, the European
02:58 Space Agency successfully got ERS-2 back on planet Earth, but it lost contact with ERS-1.
03:08 So it's going to come back in some one century, perhaps. It's completely lost. And we can
03:12 see some images of what it has done all these years. Many things, including calculating,
03:19 monitoring the surface of the Earth, the ice cap disappearing. And today's satellites and
03:26 today's various captors and radars are really inspired by this model, which has been used
03:33 until today, was able to detect the changes on the planet and to give us all the data,
03:39 which is so important for us today to plan ahead.
03:43 And as I understand it, Shirley, one of the reasons why it's coming back to Earth now
03:47 is to try and avoid creating more space junk.
03:51 Yes. And we can see a model of that space junk, which was illustrated by the European
03:58 Space Agency, again, to understand the new programs, because there's such a problem of
04:02 pollution around the Earth. So many satellites, you can see, and this was a while ago, even
04:09 two decades ago. Now, it's just there's so many of them. It can cause and it has caused
04:14 collisions between them. And this can lead to accidents in space, to satellites being,
04:20 you know, no more and not operational anymore. You know, it's a great loss. So what ESA is
04:26 doing with other space agencies is basically trying to get all the satellites gradually
04:31 back into Earth and clean up the space around us, at least not pollute it even more than
04:37 it is today. And we have some examples of the Japanese space agency was just this week
04:43 launched a probe. So at the same time, launched a rocket into space. But while it was doing
04:50 that, well, it launched a satellite, a new one, it at the same time launched a probe,
04:55 which means aims to clean, to investigate what Japanese satellites are still out there,
05:00 what can be brought back into Earth. And the idea is to bring them back either with a,
05:05 with a, you know, an arm or with a net or with some kind of magnets. And the idea is
05:10 to clean up the space around the Earth to avert accidents.
05:15 All right. Really interesting. Thanks very much, Shirley Sitvon, for us there.
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