Duck!
The Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer or
GOCE Satellite is deorbiting and will fall to earth sometime this weekend. Nobody knows when or where.
Live tracking here:
REAL TIME SATELLITE TRACKING
As of this moment, it is over the Pacific Ocean just East of Japan at 100 miles altitude and losing about 50 feet per second.
More from this article at the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:
1-tonne GOCE satellite falls to Earth Sunday night
A one-tonne European satellite is expected to disintegrate in the atmosphere and fall to the Earth�s surface in pieces Sunday night.
The European Space Agency�s Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation satellite, launched into orbit in March 2009, ran out of fuel in October and has been dropping slowly out of orbit ever since.
On Friday, the ESA predicted that GOCE would re-enter the atmosphere and break up into pieces overnight between Sunday and Monday, when it has dropped to 80 kilometres above the Earth's surface. Earlier Friday, GOCE was about 170 kilometres above the Earth�s surface � around 50 kilometres lower than when it ran out of fuel, and was expected to drop another eight kilometres over the course of the day, the ESA said.
The space agency said most of the satellite will disintegrate in the atmosphere, but some smaller parts are expected to reach the Earth�s surface.
Posted by DaveH at November 9, 2013 12:48 PM