A satellite completing its five-year mission returned to Earth using a method designed to minimise stray space debris.

A British-built weather satellite achieved an unprecedented re-entry to Earth on Friday 28th July, guided by the European Space Agency.

The spacecraft, known as Aeolus, had outlived its usefulness in gathering data and monitoring weather after a five-year mission. It returned to Earth in an assisted crash into the Atlantic Ocean. The satellite, named after the Greek god of the winds, had served weather centres across Europe.

Its guided re-entry, accomplished by the European Space Agency's mission control team in Germany, was seen as an alternative to the more conventional method of simply letting it burn up upon re-entry. The ESA was hoping to minimise the risk of space debris going astray, adding that it believed the mission would inspire other such guided re-entries.

In addition to accomplishing the first-time re-entry of its kind, Aeolus claims another distinction as the first satellite to use space as a vantage point for measuring the Earth’s winds, and since 2018, it had been measuring the movement of winds at any location on the planet by firing a laser down into the atmosphere