BHUTAN-1, the country’s first satellite, has reentered Earth’s atmosphere bringing its orbital life to an end.
BHUTAN-1 was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on 29 June 2018. On 10 August the same year, BHUTAN-1 was released into orbit from the ISS. The satellite was released into an initial orbit altitude of around 400 km (kilometer). As BHUTAN-1 orbited Earth thereafter, its altitude gradually decreased until it reached an altitude of around 250 km where the rate of altitude decrease was much faster .
The last contact with BHUTAN-1 was made by the satellite operators in the Department of IT and Telecom (DITT) from the DITT ground station on 16 November 2020. The last data showed that all technical parameters of the satellite were normal.
After a little more than 2 year and 3 months, and orbiting the Earth for more than 13,000 times, BHUTAN-1 has reentered Earth's atmosphere. It is predicted that the satellite may have disintegrated over South America on 19 November 2020.