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The Indian Space Research Organisation said it successfully carried out an “extremely challenging” controlled re-entry experiment of the decommissioned orbiting Megha-Tropiques-1 (MT-1) satellite. “The satellite re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and would have disintegrated over the Pacific Ocean”, the Bengaluru-headquartered national space agency said on Twitter on Tuesday.

The final impact region estimated is in the deep Pacific Ocean within the expected latitude and longitude boundaries, an ISRO statement said.

The low Earth satellite was launched on October 12, 2011, as a joint satellite venture of ISRO and the French space agency, CNES for tropical weather and climate studies.

Since August 2022, the satellite’s perigee was progressively lowered through a series of 20 manoeuvres, spending about 120kg of fuel.

Multiple manoeuvres including the final de-boost strategy were designed after taking into consideration several constraints, including visibility of the re-entry trace over ground stations, ground impact within the targeted zone, and allowable operating conditions of subsystems, especially the maximum deliverable thrust and the maximum firing duration constraint on thrusters.

All manoeuvre plans were screened to ensure that there would be no post manoeuvre close approaches with other space objects, especially with the crewed space stations like International Space Stations and the Chinese Space Station, ISRO said.

The final two de-boost burns were executed at 11:02 UTC and 12:51 UTC respectively on March 7 by firing four 11 Newton thrusters on-board the satellite for about 20 minutes each, it said.

The final perigee was estimated to be less than 80 km, indicating that the satellite would enter the denser layers of the Earth’s atmosphere and subsequently undergo structural disintegration. The re-entry aero-thermal flux analysis confirmed that there would be no surviving large debris fragments.

The entire sequence of events was carried out from the Mission Operations Complex in ISTRAC (ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network), Bengaluru.

An uninhabited area in the Pacific Ocean between 5°S to 14°S latitude and 119°W to 100°W longitude was identified as the targeted re-entry zone for MT1, weighing about 1000 kg, ISRO said earlier this week.

About 125 kg on-board fuel remained unutilised at its end-of-mission that could pose risks for accidental break-up, an ISRO statement had noted.

This left-over fuel was estimated to be sufficient to achieve a fully controlled atmospheric re-entry to impact the uninhabited location in the Pacific Ocean, ISRO had said.

Controlled re-entries involve de-orbiting to very low altitudes to ensure impact occurs within a targeted safe zone.

Usually, large satellites/ rocket bodies, which are likely to survive aero-thermal fragmentation upon re-entry, are made to undergo controlled re-entry to limit ground casualty risk.

However, all such satellites are specifically designed to undergo controlled re-entry at end-of-life (EOL).

“MT-1 was not designed for EOL operations through controlled re-entry which made the entire exercise extremely challenging,” ISRO said.

Furthermore, the on-board constraints of the aged satellite, where several systems had lost redundancy and showed degraded performance, and maintaining sub-systems under harsher environmental conditions at much lower than originally designed orbital altitude added to the operational complexities, it said.

Innovative workarounds were implemented by the operations team based on the study, deliberations, and exchanges among the mission, operations, flight dynamics, aerodynamics, propulsion, controls, navigation, thermal, and other sub-system design teams across the ISRO centres, who worked in synergy to surmount these challenges, it said.

Although the mission life of the satellite originally was three years, it continued to provide valuable data services for more than a decade supporting regional and global climate models till 2021, ISRO said.

UN/IADC (Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee) space debris mitigation guidelines recommend de-orbiting a LEO (Low Earth Orbit) object at its EOL, preferably through controlled re-entry to a safe impact zone, or by bringing it to an orbit where the orbital lifetime is less than 25 years, according to ISRO.

It is also recommended to carry out “passivation’ of on-board energy sources to minimise the risk of any post-mission accidental break-up, ISRO said.

The orbital lifetime of MT-1 would have been more than 100 years in its 20 deg inclined operational orbit of 867 km altitude, it said.

“As a responsible space agency committed to safe and sustainable operations in outer space, ISRO proactively takes efforts for better compliance with the UN/IADC space debris mitigation guidelines on post-mission disposal of LEO objects”, the ISRO statement said.


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Gemini North Telescope Spots Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Racing Through Solar System

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Gemini North Telescope Spots Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Racing Through Solar System

A rare interstellar object has been spotted in our solar system, making it the second known object to cross over from outside our cosmic neighbourhood and arrive near our planet. 3I/ATLAS is seen here while about 290 million miles (465 million kilometres) from Earth, when it was journeying inbound on its trip to our vicinity of the solar system. This icy wanderer, first detected by the ATLAS survey on July 1, marks just the third known object from beyond our solar system to be identified, following in the cosmic footsteps of 1I/’Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov.

Massive Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Offers Rare Glimpse Into Alien Planetary System Origins

As per a statement from the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, which oversees the International Gemini Observatory, 3I/ATLAS offers a valuable chance to study the building blocks of alien planetary systems. “The sensitivity and scheduling agility of the International Gemini Observatory has provided critical early characterisation of this interstellar wanderer,” mentioned NSF program director Martin Still. At an estimated 12 miles (20 km) in diameter, 3I/ATLAS is much larger than its predecessors, making it easier to analyse.

Images show the comet with a bright, compact coma — the envelope of dust and gas surrounding its core — and other data suggest it could be older than our own solar system. Believed to have originated from the Milky Way’s outer thick disk, 3I/ATLAS may hold clues to the conditions in far-off star systems that once harboured it. Though the discovery is thrilling to some, the comet poses no threat to the Earth as it makes its fleeting visit.

Comet 3I/ATLAS is expected to make its closest pass by the Sun on Oct. 30, when it will fly 130 million miles inside the orbit of Mars. It comes closest to Earth in December, when it is 170 million miles away. Because of its odd orbit, it’s never coming back.

Astronomers around the world are turning toward a piece of an interstellar comet that broke off using a telescope too distant to study, by necessity, as a rare chance to probe the nature of an object from another star and its solar system of origin.

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NASA Grounds Boeing Starliner Until 2026 After Test Flight Failures

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NASA Grounds Boeing Starliner Until 2026 After Test Flight Failures

The Boeing CST-100 Starliner, a crew capsule for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, has been plagued by persistent problems. Its first crewed test flight in June 2024 was cut short by technical failures, including helium pressurization leaks and multiple thruster malfunctions. NASA ultimately elected to return Starliner to Earth without its crew, keeping the astronauts aboard the station for safety. With those problems unresolved, NASA now says the capsule will remain grounded until around 2026, and its next mission will likely be uncrewed.

Technical Setbacks and Grounding

According to NASA, During its June 2024 Crew Flight Test, Starliner suffered serious propulsion issues. Multiple helium leaks were detected in the service module’s pressurization system, and five of the capsule’s 28 fine-control thrusters failed during approach to the ISS. NASA and Boeing extended the crew’s station stay while engineers traced the problems to thermal and seal failures in the thruster “doghouse” enclosures.

Ultimately NASA decided to bring Starliner back to Earth empty, concluding the test without its astronauts aboard. Boeing and NASA have since conducted extensive ground testing to validate fixes: engineers at NASA’s White Sands facility are firing thrusters in varied sequences to refine thermal models, and Boeing has added new insulation shunts and thermal barriers in the thruster housings to prevent overheating.

Future of the Starliner Program

Boeing’s delays have reshaped NASA’s Commercial Crew plans. NASA officials say Starliner may even fly one more uncrewed test before carrying astronauts. Starliner development is now billions over budget: its original $4.2 billion contract has grown by roughly $2 billion in extra costs. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon has flown 11 ISS crew missions and its NASA contract has climbed toward $5 billion amid extra flights added while Starliner lagged. NASA still views Starliner as a critical backup to Dragon and aims to certify it for crew rotations by late 2025 or early 2026.

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Quantum Leap: Scientists Achieve Magic State Distillation on Logical Qubits for the First Time

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Quantum Leap: Scientists Achieve Magic State Distillation on Logical Qubits for the First Time

Scientists have shown the elusive phenomenon of quantum computing that could create the way for fault-tolerant machines, which are much powerful than any of the supercomputers. Magic state distillation is the process which was proposed 20 years ago; however, the use of logical qubits has puzzled scientists since then. It has long been considered crucial for making high-quality resources, called magic states, required to complete the quantum computer’s potential. It has been possible on plains, till now, by which the high-quality magic states are purified so that the complex algorithms can use them. It has not been possible on the logical qubits.

According to Science Daily, the groups of physical qubits sharing the same data are configured for detecting and correcting the errors which frequently disturb the quantum computing operations. However, the scientists with QuEra said that they have demonstrated magic state distillation for the first time on logical qubits. The findings were published on July 14, 2025, in the journal Nature.

Path to Fault-tolerant Quantum Computing

Quantum computers would not be fulfilling their promise without this process. They use qubits as their building blocks and make use of quantum logic, the set of rules and operations that control how quantum information is processed for running the algorithms and processing data. It is challenging to run the complex algorithms together with maintaining amazingly low error rates.

Physical qubits are noisy, which implies that the calculations are often disrupted by factors such as temperature fluctuations and electromagnetic radiation. This is the reason why so much research has taken place on Quantum Error Correction.

With the distillation process, the faithfulness of the magic state increased for any input. This shows that the fault-tolerant magic state distillation has worked in practice. Further, it implies that the quantum computer uses both logical qubits and magic states of higher quality for running non-Clifford gates.

Scientists say that the shift has been observed for a few years. It was challenging to make the quantum computers, with the detection and correction of errors. However, the scientists have successfully done it.

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