Destroyed by the very force of nature it was intended to study, the European Space Agency's (ESA) GOCE satellite is no more. The gravity and ocean-studying satellite plunged into the Earth's atmosphere Monday, Nov. 11, disintegrating on its way down without causing any damage on the ground below.
Dubbed the "Ferrari of space" due to its sleek design, GOCE stands for Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer. Over the last four years the satellite has provided scientists with an unprecedented look at the Earth's "geoid," or how the oceans would look without any external influences other than the Earth's gravitational field and rotation. Its descent took it over Siberia, the western Pacific Ocean, the eastern Indian Ocean and Antarctica before heat and pressure finally reduced the satellite to cosmic dust.
"The one-ton GOCE satellite is only a small fraction of the 100-150 tons of man-made space objects that reenter Earth's atmosphere annually," said Heiner Klinkrad, head of ESA's Space Debris Office.
"In the 56 years of spaceflight, some 15,000 tons of man-made space objects have reentered the atmosphere without causing a single human injury to date."
The ESA's GOCE satellite's troubles began Oct. 21, when fuel ran out and the satellite began a slow descent towards Earth, pulled in by the very gravitational field it was made to map out. According to the ESA, the satellite stayed in orbit three times longer than it was expected to.
The GOCE satellite was launched into space March 2009 and maintained a relatively low orbit of 160 miles high. Flying at such a low orbit allowed the satellite to not only chart out oceanic details with unprecedented accuracy, but also study the air density and wind speeds in the upper atmosphere. As time went on, the GOCE satellite's orbit was lowered twice so that its instruments could gather higher resolution data. In the end, however, instrument failures, and loss of fuel and pressure forced the GOCE back home.
For more information on the GOCE satellite, as well as what findings its data has contributed to, visit the GOCE webpage.