ESA official announcements and press releases

ESA Successfully Completes World's First Targeted Reentry of Cluster Satellite Salsa

Sep 9, 2024, 06:16 AM

The European Space Agency (ESA) successfully completed the world's first targeted reentry of a satellite. The satellite, named Salsa, is part of the ESA's Cluster mission, which consisted of four satellites launched nearly 25 years ago. Salsa reentered Earth's atmosphere on September 8, 2024, at 19:27 BST/20:47 CEST (18:47 UTC) over a remote area of the South Pacific Ocean. The reentry was executed with remarkable precision, having an uncertainty of just four seconds. Researchers will now study the reentry to determine if any parts of the satellite survived, as it reentered at 11km per second.