wkat4242 4 days ago

That's one capability that was lost with the space shuttle. There's nothing remaining nor planned that can bring something that size back from LEO.

I feel like materials science could learn a lot more about radiation embrittlement and high energy micro impacts.

The space shuttle is often regarded as a huge mistake and in many ways (reusability especially, it was more like rebuildability :) ) it was, but it was still hell of a machine.

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  • femto 4 days ago

    > That's one capability that was lost with the space shuttle. There's nothing remaining nor planned that can bring something that size back from LEO.

    Surely the X-37 could be used to bring a satellite down, even if it's not an acknowledged capability?

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    • mr_toad 3 days ago

      The X-37 is tiny, it’s only 5 tonnes itself. But one of the uses is probably to bring back smaller satellites to determine how long term exposure in space has affected them.

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  • ACCount37 3 days ago

    Starship might be capable, once it gets the "chomper" cargo bay. Would require custom hardware though.

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    • wkat4242 3 days ago

      Yeah the cool thing about the shuttle is that it also was a mini space station. Astronauts could actually live in it for a while. Which came in handy building the ISS I'm sure. Robotics weren't what they are now so it was a lot of hand work.

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gblargg 3 days ago

Even the article's author seems confused:

> one of the very few satellites to have returned from its mission in space intact

This makes it sounds like it was due to great luck rather than human decision. It's in fact one of the very few satellites that it was decided to have retrieved (intact) from space (at significant expense) rather than letting it deorbit and burn up on re-entry.

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