Update from the Operations team at ESOC following the 23:42 CET pass:
Contact with GOCE was made once again from the Troll station in Antarctica at 23:42 CET. The central computer temperature is at 80ºC and the battery is at 84ºC.
At an altitude of less than 120 km, the spacecraft is – against expectations – still functional.
Editor’s Note: The Kármán line, or Karman line, lies at an altitude of 100 kilometres above Earth sea level, and commonly represents the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.
Discussion: 12 comments
To our friends at ESA… You have an amazing spacecraft in GOCE! These last few orbits are clearly record-setting, if not record-breaking. Congratulations on a very well engineered spacecraft. I hope you are very proud of your accomplishments…good luck on the reentry: may it be an uneventful and, yet, proud end to a fine instrument! Best wishes, James Edwin Whedbee, USA…
Michigan is rooting you on !! Go baby go let’s drop this in Lake Huron. 😀
yes, GOCE is a hero!!
Fine job!!! Well made spacecraft. We’re routing for it!!! Mississippi, USA
Fantastic job and good luck with the “landing”!
VA is cheering you all on!
One more contact with troll?
Good for taking the heat. Next spacecraft can proudly join us on our Sauna evening in Helsinki, Finland!
Wow! High temperatures and still functioning. That’s what I say “good job”.
I observed it passing east of Tampa, Florida, 5 minutes ago ( 00:35 UTC) about 2 minutes later than predicted by https://www.satflare.com/track.asp?q=34602#TOP. It is now our eastern US and still intact….
Could you please at least tell us where it is right now? No more of this “probability” stuff.
This has to be known for sure by now.
Amazing and captivating to watch it! Every 43 minutes wondering if it will succumb to the equator pass or if it will survive to the next!!! Very nice job!!!
I am curious, any visual reports? It’s a busy area for vessels at sea, this time of the year. Will you post estimate for deorbit profile? Is it possible that final destabilization triggered by change (reduction!) of drag due to flying into sunset? “Aerodynamic” spacecraft indeed 😀
Very interesting coverage for a very unusual piece of “space debris”, thank you a lot