European Remote-Sensing Satellite - ERS-2

ERS-2

Its successor, ERS-2, was launched on April 21, 1995, on an Ariane 4, from ESA's Guiana Space Centre near Kourou, French Guiana. Largely identical to ERS-1, it added additional instruments and included improvements to existing instruments including:

• GOME (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment) is a nadir scanning ultraviolet and visible spectrometer.
• ATSR-2 included 3 visible spectrum bands specialized for Chlorophyll and Vegetation

When ERS-2 was launched, ERS-1 shared the same orbital plane. This allowed a tandem mission, with ERS-2 passing the same point on the ground 1 day later than ERS-1. ERS-2 has a repeat cycle of 35 days.

ERS-2 has been operating without gyroscopes since February 2001, resulting in some degradation of the data provided by the instruments. The tape drive aboard failed on June 22, 2003, leaving the instruments operating only within visibility of a ground station. Since the tape drive failure additional ground stations have been brought online to increase the data gathering abilities of the satellite. The Wind Scatterometer and GOME were the only instruments of their kind until the launch of MetOp-A.

The successor to ERS-2 is Envisat containing improved versions of many of the instruments onboard ERS-2; however, its operational life was increased until 2011. Over a series of burns in July, August and September, ERS-2 was finally depleted of all fuel on September 5, 2011. At 13:16:38 the batteries were switched off, leaving the spacecraft in an orbit where it will reenter the Earth's atmosphere and safely disintegrate within 25 years according to international standards.

In the final stages of emptying the fuel tanks, it was estimated that they would be empty after a 40 minute burn on 2 September 2011. However, the spacecraft survived both this maneuver and a second 40 minute burn on 3 September. On 5 September a third burn was initiated and the fuel tanks were finally drained.