--- title: "Watch a Satellite Piece Melt Into a Puddle of Metal" description: "The European Space Agency just placed a piece of satellite in an extremely hot plasma wind tunnel to melt it into a ball of liquid metal." date: "2019-06-17" modified: "2019-06-17" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/satellite-melt-metal-space-junk" categories: - "Off-World" - "Space" tags: - "ESA" - "satellite" - "SpaceX" - "starlink" - "the digest" --- # Watch a Satellite Piece Melt Into a Puddle of Metal ![The European Space Agency just placed a piece of satellite in an extremely hot plasma wind tunnel to melt it into a ball of liquid metal.]() *\Image: ESA/Victor Tangermann\* ## Liquid Metal Satellite The European Space Agency (ESA) just placed a [piece of a satellite]() in an extremely hot plasma wind tunnel to melt it into a ball of liquid metal. The agency designed the test to demonstrate how parts of satellites burn up upon reentering Earth's atmosphere but plenty of material still makes it down to Earth — and it could lead to new satellite designs that ensure total burn up during reentry. https://youtu.be/MF44aWIcViY ## Space Junk The test was part of ESA's Clean Space initiative, which aims to find ways to mitigate the growing problem of space junk, the defunct satellites and other human-built pieces of tech that are cluttering up the space around our planet. The small four-by-ten centimeter section of satellite was put through hell on Earth inside the German Aerospace Center's plasma wind tunnel, according to an [ESA statement](). The team heated the piece to several thousand degrees Celsius, and it "reached a complete demise at high heat flux level." But there were some "discrepancies with the prediction models," according to ESA Clean Space engineer Tiago Soares. ## Starlink Dispute The news comes less than a month after Elon Musk-led SpaceX [unleashed the first 60]() of more than 10,000 planned Starlink micro-satellites into low-Earth orbit. The astronomy community [criticized the move](), noting that SpaceX's satellites could end up cluttering the night sky, to which [Musk responded]() that the agency designed the satellites to be "completely demisable" when burning up during reentry. **READ MORE:** [Watch a chunk of satellite melt like a marshmallow on fire]() \[*CNET*\] **More on satellites:** *[SpaceX's Starlink Satellites Could Make Space a Minefield]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()