SA’s GOCE Satellite Will Run Out Of Gas In Mid-October, Before Plummeting Back To Earth

fter four years of working to map out Earth’s gravity, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mission is nearing its end. The satellite, which has been orbiting Earth since 2009 at the lowest altitude of any research satellite, will reenter our atmosphere soon. GOCE has been called the “Ferrari of space” because of its sleek, aerodynamic design. This designer spacecraft has mapped variations in Earth’s gravity with extreme detail, resulting in a unique model of the “geoid“, which is essentially a virtual surface where water does not flow from one point to another. More

(Source: Red Orbit - Sep 16)