The European Space Agency (ESA) recently performed an assisted/semi-controlled descent of its retired Aeolus, a wind-studying spacecraft lofted into Earth orbit in 2018.
Mission scientists and engineers took on the tricky task of targeting a remote stretch of the Atlantic Ocean for the plunge to Earth of Aeolus. A key aspect of assisted reentry is that, for any spacecraft leftovers believed to survive the plunge, those bits and pieces would fall into a remote area.
