The scientists at ESA flew “chase aircraft” over the South Pacific, overnight, to watch these two smallish disk orbiters burn up — nothing was expected to reach the ocean — just entirely vaporize… on the way down.

And that is precisely what happened. Well done! Here’s all that:

…The final two of ESA’s pioneering Cluster spacecraft, Samba and Tango, will end their journeys as they burn up in our atmosphere on 31 August and 1 September respectively. Their targeted reentries mark the end of a mission that has transformed our understanding of Earth’s magnetic environment. The final moments also offer a rare scientific opportunity for reentry observations from a plane. . . .

“When a spacecraft reenters the atmosphere, it experiences extreme forces. Temperatures soar, materials melt and vaporise, and the spacecraft gradually breaks apart. But how exactly?” says Stijn Lemmens, senior space debris mitigation analyst at ESA.

“We need to understand better how they disintegrate to inform the design of spacecraft that can burn up completely, reducing the risk on the ground, while we also aim to prevent pollution of the atmosphere….”

As we wait until we can share the first image from Samba’s demise today, the final reentry time prediction was confirmed for Tango.

Later today, Tango will reenter the atmosphere at 21:30:31 UTC / 23:30:31 CEST, with an uncertainty remaining of +/- 10 seconds either way….

That is obviously an artist’s impression, above. Onward — just the same… and, just for grins, I may drop in on the tourism-friendly ESA facility in Paris, on my last day in September (09.30.2026). Smile… we shall see.

नमस्ते