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GOCE Reenters Earth's Atmosphere

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
November 10, 2013
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GOCE Reenters Earth’s Atmosphere
“Close to 01:00 CET on Monday 11 November, ESA’s GOCE satellite reentered Earth’s atmosphere on a descending orbit pass that extended across Siberia, the western Pacific Ocean, the eastern Indian Ocean and Antarctica. As expected, the satellite disintegrated in the high atmosphere and no damage to property has been reported.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

7 responses to “GOCE Reenters Earth's Atmosphere”

  1. dogstar29 says:
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    A notable achievement, but since the satellite was powered it might have been prudent to initiate a controlled entry before it ran out of fuel.

    • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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      The data it gathered was far more valuable than ensuring that a few hundred pounds of debris landed in an ocean. as it was, it landed in an ocean anyway.

  2. Anonymous says:
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    Once again lots of predictably hysterical mainstream news media headlines in the run up to GOCE’s demise. Just out of curiosity when is Hubble due to re-enter? And imagine the headlines!

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Luckily, Hubble is still pretty far up, so we have some time to prepare. I would hope that when the time comes, it will be brought down in a controlled manner as I seriously doubt the primary mirror will burn up in the atmosphere.

      • cb450sc says:
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        The actual plan is for a robotic mission to either bring it down in a controlled manner, or boost it to a higher parking orbit. It lacks any such capability on its own, since it was assumed it would have been brought down (in Columbia, specifically) and placed in a museum.

  3. hikingmike says:
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    I have to say that satellite looks pretty badass in all the images I’ve seen of it and this is certainly another one here. GOCE reenters the way GOCE wants. A guy in the Falkland Islands caught it–
    http://spaceflightnow.com/n

    • ProfSWhiplash says:
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      Definitely one of the most photogenic (sexy even) spacecraft ever designed. Being Italian made, a BBC article appropriately noted its nickname as aptly being “Space Ferrari.”