There are ~10k active satellites currently orbiting Earth— but what happens when they start dropping on us?
That’s what the European Space Agency (ESA) hopes to find out with a new project called the Destructive Reentry Assessment Container Object (or DRACO, with that handy acronym explaining why it’s both a “container” and an “object”).
- DRACO will be a 441-pound, washing-machine-sized box of sensors and cameras.
- The ESA will launch it into orbit in 2027 and watch as DRACO plummets to Earth ~12 hours later.
- DRACO will deploy a parachute during reentry, slowing down just long enough to transmit data about its brief and painful life.
- Scientists will use the data to design future satellites that don’t break up.
This is all in pursuit of the ESA’s goal to eliminate the creation of space junk by 2030. There are ~30k pieces of trackable garbage floating around in space, any one of which could hit something important and cause problems.
This isn’t the first time…
… that people have watched something fall from orbit with baited breath.
In 2001, Taco Bell offered to give everyone in the US a free taco if a piece of the Russian space station Mir landed on a target near Australia.
The station’s core hit somewhere closer to Chile, saving Taco Bell ~$10m.
Hopefully a brave European fast-food chain will make a similar offer and try to catch part of DRACO.
Space
