In 2002, the European Space Agency launched Envisat, the largest civilian satellite (at the time) to go to low Earth orbit (LEO). For a decade, it observed our planet and sent back valuable data on Earth’s climate, tracking the decline of Arctic sea ice and more, until it went dark in 2012. One of the prevailing theories for its demise is that it simply ran out of fuel. As LEO becomes more crowded, Envisat is a school bus-sized example of a growing area of concern in the space domain: orbital debris and the ever-increasing risk of disrupting active satellite missions that would yield outcomes ranging from inconvenient to catastrophic for modern society.
Click here for original story, ISS experiments to find solutions for cleaning up orbital debris and repairing damaged satellites
Source: Phys.org