ESA Launches GOCE To Map Earth's Gravity

DSG2 sends in an ESA press release which reads in part: "This afternoon, the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite developed by the European Space Agency was lofted into a near-Sun-synchronous, low Earth orbit by a Rockot launcher lifting off from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia. GOCE is the first of a new family of ESA satellites designed to study our planet and its environment in order to enhance our knowledge and understanding of Earth-system processes and their evolution, to enable us to address the challenges of global climate change. In particular, GOCE will measure the minute differences in the Earth's gravity field around the globe." One consequence of mapping the planet's geoid in finer detail is that ocean currents can be limned more accurately. This BBC article from 2007 goes into some detail about this application.

Comments

height

[Silm]

what really interests me is the fact that this satellite in such a low orbit that it actually has wings and an aerodynamic body to cope with the small amounts of air on that height. Those wings combined with the ion motor's onboard make it almost a plane/ satellite hybrid.

this and that

[girlintraining]

Article title: ESA Launches GOCE To Map Earth's Gravity
Article quote: ...to enable us to address the challenges of global climate change.

Great. Now we're going to have to start ejecting people into orbit because they stayed under their carbon credits quota, but they had too much gravitational pull and that's damaging the environment. I can just see the green movement in five years: "Stop warping spacetime! Excercise! And screw the whales."