Reentry Breakup Recorder

A Reentry Breakup Recorder (REBR) is a device that is designed to be placed aboard a spacecraft to record pertinent data when the spacecraft (intentionally) breaks up as it re-enters Earth's atmosphere.

The device records data regarding the thermal, acceleration, rotational and other stresses the vehicle is subject to. In the final stages it transmits the data back to a laboratory before it is destroyed when it hits the surface.

Two REBRs were launched in January 2011 on the Japanese Kounotori 2 transfer vehicle. One recorded the subsequent re-entry of that vehicle, and the other was placed aboard the Johannes Kepler ATV, which reentered Earth's atmosphere on 21 June 2011.

The Kounotori 2 vehicle re-entered on 30 March 2011. Its REBR successfully collected and returned its data; it survived the impact with the ocean and while floating continued to transmit. It is expected to take between 6 and 8 weeks to analyze the data.

The second unit was intended to collect data during the reentry of the Johannes Kepler ATV (ATV-2); however the device failed to make contact after reentry and consequently no data was retrieved.

Another unit was used successfully for Kounotori 3 for its reentry on September 14, 2012.

Earlier data collection from reentry and breakup was mostly visual and spectrographic. A particularly well-documented case is seen in a reentry and breakup over the South Pacific—recorded by a large team of NASA and ESA space agency personnel with extensive photographic image and video data collection, at multiple spectrographic wavelengths—occurred in September 2008, following the first mission of the ESA unmanned resupply spacecraft—the Automated Transfer Vehicle Jules Verne—to the International Space Station (ISS) in March 2008.

...
Wikipedia