Satellite likely incinerated after re-entering Earth's atmosphere: officials

November 10, 2013|Irene Klotz | Reuters

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - A large science satellite that mapped Earth's gravity likely re-entered the atmosphere where most of it incinerated on Sunday, about three weeks after running out of fuel and beginning to lose altitude, officials said.

Ground tracking stations' last contact with Europe's Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer, or GOCE, was at 5:42 p.m. (2242 GMT) as it passed 75 miles above Antarctica, Heiner Klinkrad, head of the European Space Agency's space debris office, wrote in a status report posted on the European Space Agency's website.

The official designation of space is the Karman line, 62 miles above Earth.


"By the time you read this, the spacecraft's amazing flight will, most likely, have come to an end," space agency spokesman Daniel Scuka wrote in an update posted around 6:45 p.m.

There was no immediate word on where and when any debris may have landed.



The 1.2-ton (1,100-kg) GOCE satellite is small in comparison to other spacecraft that recently crashed back into the atmosphere.

In January 2012, Russia's failed 14-ton (12,700-kg) Phobos-Grunt Mars probe returned. In 2011, NASA's 6.5-ton (5,900-kg) Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite and Germany's 2.4-ton (2,177-kg) X-ray ROSAT telescope re-entered the atmosphere.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Paul Simao)