The Megha-Tropics-1 (MT1) mission will be completed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) on Tuesday. The satellite will intentionally crash into the Earth’s atmosphere. The MT1 mission was launched into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in 2011 in collaboration with the French space agency, CNES. For more than a decade, the mission has provided important information on tropical weather and climate change.
MT1 was originally intended to operate as a three-year mission, but it was granted an extension until 2021 due to continued provision of valuable data supporting regional and global climate models.
ISRO began the process in August 2022 by conducting orbital maneuvers to gradually lower MT1’s orbit. The satellite is scheduled to crash on Tuesday between 4:30-7:30 p.m. ISRO has designated an uninhabited area in the Pacific Ocean as a targeted re-entry zone.
MT1 focuses on Earth’s tropical belt, a region responsible for transporting excess energy from the Sun to other regions through the motion of the atmosphere and oceans. This energy budget has a significant impact on Earth and thus makes it an important area for scientists to study.
Why ISRO MT1 is crashing?
The decision to crash MT1 is in line with United Nations Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (UNIADC) guidelines that mandate that satellites be deorbited at the end of their mission lives.
According to UNIADC guidelines the satellite should be brought into a safe impact zone by a controlled reentry or into an orbit with an orbital lifetime of less than 25 years.
Such satellites, if left in their current orbits, would continue to decay for over 100 years. MT1 weighs 1,000 kg and carries about 125 kg of fuel on board. This creates the risk of an accidental break up. ISRO decided to de-orbit the satellite to avoid such an accident.
