Aeolus

Aeolus, formally the Atmospheric Dynamics Mission Aeolus or ADM-Aeolus, was a European Space Agency Earth observation satellite built by Airbus Defence and Space. It was the first spacecraft able to measure wind profiles around the whole planet, from the surface up into the stratosphere, and it was named after the Greek god who ruled the winds. Its single instrument, ALADIN, was an ultraviolet Doppler wind lidar with a 1.5 metre telescope, and its data fed numerical weather prediction centres in near real time. The mission was approved in 1999 for a 2007 launch, but trouble with the laser delayed it by eleven years. Aeolus flew on a Vega rocket from French Guiana on 22 August 2018, orbited at only 320 kilometres to collect enough backscattered light, and was brought down in an assisted re-entry over Antarctica on 28 July 2023 after outliving its planned three-year life.