Saturday, November 9, 2013

GOCE is falling! GOCE is falling!

GOCE is falling!  GOCE is falling!  The GOCE satellite is an ESA project, a low earth orbit satellite that has run out of fuel.  It's orbit was (intentionally) so low that it encountered drag from the Earth's upper atmosphere, so running out of fuel means that it will inevitably be dragged out of orbit.  These things can't be predicted precisely (the drag profile and upper-atmosphere dynamics are just too complex), but the expectations are that it will fall sometime this weekend.  It's in a polar orbit, which means that it could come down nearly anywhere on the planet.  GOCE is big enough that some pieces of it should make it all the way to the Earth's surface (most of it will burn up in the atmosphere). 

N2YO has a nifty real-time tracker.  As I write this, GOCE is 108 miles high, and will pass almost directly over my head in about an hour (screenshot at right; the little red dot is where I live)...

No comments:

Post a Comment