![]() ![]() And that appears to have gone mostly according to plan. ![]() One final maneuver occurred Friday, which was expected to set the stage for reentry about five hours later. The campaign picked up again Thursday (July 27), with four planned orbit-lowering maneuvers. On Monday (July 24), Aeolus performed two engine burns that lasted a total of 37.5 minutes and lowered its altitude by about 19 miles (30 km), to 155 miles (250 km). The spacecraft began falling from this orbit on June 19, and the mission team started accelerating the process five weeks later. Here's how ISS astronauts jettison old space station hardware (video)Īeolus studied Earth's winds from an altitude of about 200 miles (320 kilometers). Listen to music 'written' by doomed Aeolus wind-studying satellite (video) Satellite will die by fire as 1st-of-its-kind operation sends it plummeting down to Earth And the Aeolus team hopes to lead the way in this respect.Īeolus' reentry campaign "sets a new precedent for safe spacecraft operations and sustainable spaceflight, for both future missions and those already in orbit," ESA's Rosa Jesse wrote in a blog post last month. Guided reentries, which are commonly performed by rocket stages after orbital launches, could help make a dent in this space-junk problem. In terms of mass, we are speaking about 11,000 tons," Krag said at the July 19 press conference.Ībout 100 tons of human-made space junk fall to Earth each year, and large objects reenter our atmosphere about once a week on average, he added. "Today, we have 10,000 spacecraft in space, of which 2,000 are not functional. And there's a lot of stuff up there just waiting to come down. Story by Lindsey Doermann.That threat, though small, is real whenever a satellite falls uncontrolled to Earth: In general, about 20% of a spacecraft's mass survives the fiery trip through the atmosphere and hits terra firma (or, more commonly, ocean waters). NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang, using Landsat data from the U.S. In October, Windpark Fryslân will be the site of the Windmill Cup, a sailing race that courses through the turbines. While the island is only 2 hectares (5 acres) in size, it is surrounded by 25 hectares (60 acres) of shallow water that provides habitat for fish.Īlong with a new power source and wildlife habitat, the Dutch have found new recreational opportunities associated with wind project. Nearby, an artificial island that was created as a construction platform now serves as a nature reserve and bird sanctuary. One of the two sets of locks in the dike is located at Kornwerderzand. In addition, installing the rotors, which are 130 meters (430 feet) in diameter, required finding windows of relative calm in a naturally windy place. The vessels had to both fit through the locks in the dike and operate in the shallow waters of the lake. A major constraint was the size of ships that could be used to transport construction materials and turbine components to the site. In 2022, the installation produced 1.236 terawatt hours.Ĭonstructing the wind farm in Lake IJssel posed unique challenges, according to the company Van Oord, which was part of the consortium that built Windpark Fryslân. This is equivalent to approximately 1.2 percent of electricity use in the Netherlands, or enough to power about 500,000 households. ![]() The wind farm came online in autumn 2021 with the capacity to generate 1.5 terawatt hours annually. The 32-kilometer-long (20-mile-long) Afsluitdijk, which provides flood protection and separates the lake from the Wadden Sea, is also prominent in the image. Their arrangement in a hexagon shape is intended to minimize how much the installation obstructs the view of the horizon. In this image, acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 on July 8, 2023, Windpark Fryslân’s precisely spaced turbines are seen rising out of Lake IJssel. Windpark Fryslân, an array of 89 wind turbines clustered within a hexagon shape, is the largest freshwater wind farm in the world. So it may come as little surprise that the Netherlands is home to a modern, second-to-none wind energy installation. Suffice it to say, the Dutch have a history with wind power. Today’s story is the answer to the July 2023 puzzler. ![]()
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