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Akragon
reply to post by Meldionne1
I've been hopeing it smacks some poor fool right in the forehead... Preferably someone who deserves such a fate
That's as good as any other guess really...
(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 BST) as it passed 75 miles (121 km) 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 (100 km) above Earth.
About 25 percent of the car-sized satellite was expected to have survived re-entry, with debris most likely falling into the ocean, European Space Agency officials said.
"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.