A tethered cubesat is projected to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up within six weeks whereas an untethered one could take up to nine years.
WASHINGTON — Millennium Space Systems later this year will launch an experiment intended to show that a small satellite with a deployable tether can safely deorbit in a matter of weeks.
The company announced on July 16 it has built and qualified a spacecraft for the experiment dubbed DragRacer. The spacecraft has two identical cubesats that will be ejected simultaneously in low Earth orbit. One will host a tether and other will not.
Millennium predicts that the tethered cubesat will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up within six weeks whereas the untethered one could take up to nine years.
Full Article: spacenews.com