Sunday, November 10, 2013

GOCE to fall to Earth sometime today

Space.com asks the key question in European Satellite Is Falling from Space, But Where Will It Hit?
By Megan Gannon, News Editor
November 08, 2013 01:20pm ET
A European gravity-mapping satellite is expected to fall out of space in a few days, though no one knows exactly where its surviving fragments will land.

The fate of European Space Agency's falling GOCE satellite was sealed in October, when the spacecraft ran out of the fuel needed to keep it aloft in a very low orbit above Earth.

Now that the satellite's mission is over, its handlers at the European Space Agency (ESA) are closely tracking its ever-descending orbit to determine where it might fall.
According to Time Magazine, they don't know where, but they do know about when: Duck! Falling Satellite Arrives on Sunday.

That's more precise than CNN, who not only can't tell if the vehicle will crash tonight or tomorrow, but also got the origin of the satellite wrong in Russian satellite falling back to Earth.

The Russian spacecraft should break up as it re-enters the atmosphere but no one knows where the space junk will hit.
No this is from ESA, not Roscosmos.  Derp.  CNN didn't correct the mistake on the text accompanying the embed at their website, although it did correct the error in the article itself.

Speaking of the ESA, here is their video about the mission via Space.com: GOCE Satellite - Science Performed Before Its Destruction | Video.

ESA's Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mapped the Earth's gravity with precision. Find out about the science it performed in this end of mission video.
There, a moment of science for a soon to be defunct spacecraft.

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