Sent in by ESA’s Christoph Steiger at ESOC.
GOCE is now below 130 km altitude. Spacecraft still in pretty good shape when last seen around 18:30 CET (17:30 UTC) at ESA’s Kiruna ground station in northern Sweden. Our orbit predictions are holding up extremely well; we still have no problems finding GOCE [with our stations].
Estrack Kiruna station, Sweden. ESA-S.Corvaja
Attitude control keeps working perfectly. Temperatures of battery and central computer (both located at the front of the spacecraft) now at around 45 degC.
Next contact with GOCE is expected at Kiruna for around 20:00 CET (19:00 UTC).
Discussion: 4 comments
Thanks for the updates. I’d love it if there was a map providing frequent live updates based on tracking, path, etc. Not because I’m worried “the sky is falling” but because I think it’s great we have this capability (and part of the reason we have this capability, I imagine, is because of the work of GOCE). It’s fun to see the course it’s following as it reenters the atmosphere. I think our infinitesimally small chance of having it land in our backyard is more than worth it if the tradeoff is being able to see on a map how it’s moving.
Michael Craig
Hi Michael: The ‘map’ is basically the tracker widget (see top right of out blog home page). It will remain accurate up until the final two orbits; for those we will update you here via the blog direct from ESOC, as much as we can…
Needs to stay aloft for another 5.5 to 6 hours so I can see a fireball over Lake Huron. 😀
Thanks for all the updates!
I am alsow so interested in this Goce landing somewhere. I`m in Finland, Helsinki. Is there just now any map to see where Goce is just now?