European Falling Satellite GOCE Crashes into South Atlantic Ocean [UPDATE]

The European Satellite GOCE crashed into the Earth's atmosphere on Monday, November 11 at 01.00 CET (about 19:00 ET), ESA announced. Most of its debris landed in the South Atlantic Ocean.

The ESA's aerodynamically-shaped GOCE satellite (Gravity Field and State-State Ocean Circulation Explorer) that mapped Earth's gravitation field in detail, re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on 11 November close to 01.00 CET and during its descend it passed by Siberia, the Western Pacific Ocean and the eastern Indian Ocean and Antarctica. As predicted earlier, the satellite fell on earth during the weekend. The event did not cause any damage to property or lives.

Dubbed as 'Ferrari of Space', GOCE came to a natural end mid-October when it ran out of xenon propellant and since then it has been falling toward Earth. The craft was last spotted near the Falkland Islands at an altitude of 80 km. About 25 percent of the 1 ton probe reached the Earth's surface over the southern regions of South Atlantic.

"The one-tonne GOCE satellite is only a small fraction of the 100-150 tonnes of man-made space objects that re-enter Earth's atmosphere annually," Heiner Klinkrad, Head of ESA's Space Debris Office, said in a statement. "In the 56 years of spaceflight, some 15 000 tonnes of man-made space objects have re-entered the atmosphere without causing a single human injury to date."

Launched in 2009, the satellite measured the global gravity of Earth and flew just 224 km above the planet. When compared to the other spacecrafts that recently made a re-entry into the Earth atmosphere, GOCE is a very small satellite. The 14 Russian Phobos-Grunt Mars probe weighing 14 ton (12,700kg) re-entered the Earth on January 2012. NASA's 6.5-ton (5,900-kg) Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite crashed back to Earth in 2011.