GOCE Satellite Is Falling To Earth But Nobody Knows Where It Will Land

Virtucon writes "The Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer or GOCE Satellite is expected to fall to Earth this weekend. It weighs over a ton and unfortunately the Scientists don't exactly know where it will land. You can track it here. It should re-enter sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning. Makr Hopkins, chair of the National Society's Executive Committee said: 'The satellite is one of the few satellites in a Polar Orbit. Consequently, it could land almost anywhere.' The GOCE mission was to create an accurate gravity map of the Earth."

Comments

The tracking website is down...

[ClaraBow]

I"m sleeping in the basement tonight!

Re:The tracking website is down...

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's news? :)

Re:The tracking website is down...

[Tablizer]

but that's where you always sleep.

Re:The tracking website is down...

[Tablizer]

The difference this time is that the pizza guy is too scared to deliver

Re:The tracking website is down...

[sootman]

Good plan. One-ton satellite at thousands of miles an hour... that extra floor oughtta do the trick. :-)

Re:The tracking website is down...

[The nickname is]

I'd like to learn about TOP and you seem the best source. Could you email me at tables@mailinator.com so I check can my understanding over email?

Re:The tracking website is down...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wherever that thing falls, finders keepers!

Re:The tracking website is down...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am going to track it first and move to the basement only if necessary. Oops! "You can track it here." - "The page you are looking for is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later."

Re:The tracking website is down...

[hoboroadie]

IIRC, most of the damage from that recent event was windows shattering. Unless you have a dedicated blast shelter to go, to that's probably your best move.
BTW, when I see bright flashes in the sky, I've trained myself to get behind something to avoid my skin catching fire, and then run to some substantial cover in the interval between the flash and the blast wave. Very cool looking until your retinas dissolve.

Hmmm

[fustakrakich]

Maybe the next one ought to create an accurate reentry map...

Use the map

[david999]

You would think they could use the gravity map the satellite was creating to predict where the satellite would fall.....

Re:Use the map

[Brad1138]

I know not of this "Gravity" you speak of, but "Intelligent falling" is hard to predict.

Re:Use the map

[Tablizer]

You would think they could use the gravity map the satellite was creating to predict where the satellite would fall...

Whoever it lands on will certainly get the ultimate lesson in gravity.

Re:Use the map

[mcgrew]

Whoever it lands on will certainly get the ultimate lesson in gravity.

Yes, it would be a grave situation.

If anyone seriously thinks this is a threat, buy a lottery ticket.

I saw a really weird shooting star once while traveling. It was shooting upwards, was a really bright green, and flashed as it went.

The next day I read in the paper that the Russians had thrown a very large old computer out of the MIR. This one ought to be a hell of a shooting star if it comes down at night anywhere where anyone can see it.

Re:Use the map

[cffrost]

I saw a really weird shooting star once while traveling. It was shooting upwards, was a really bright green, and flashed as it went.

It sounds like you might have witnessed upper-atmospheric lightning. If you're unfamiliar with these phenomena, please see some of the rare* videos that have been captured. Although it might** have been MIR's jettisoned computer, (which might explain the green color (i.e., burning copper wire)), UAL would account for both the color and the upward trajectory.

* Although witnessed for decades by pilots, their stories had been dismissed. UAL has only recently been recognized as being "real," and research is in its infancy. As such, the number of pictures and video clips that have been collected so far are few in number.

** I say "might" because I'm not familiar with the appearance of artificial satellite re-entries.

Legal aspect

[melikamp]

If it lands on someone's head, would it not be, technically speaking, a homicide?

Re:Legal aspect

[ColdWetDog]

Well, it all depends.

If it lands in the US, it could be considered a lawsuit.
If it lands on South Korea, it could be construed as a blow from the Sacred Unicorn of the North.
If it lands in Russia, it will end up on You Tube for weeks.

If it lands anywhere else, it will be Obama's fault.

Re:Legal aspect

[gl4ss]

yeah..

manslaughter, involuntary(debatable if it's unplanned I suppose, since they knew it would land somewhere when they shot it up) homicide - but technically yes.

however, if you can't get them on trial for intentional killings done by bombs dropped from the sky on civilians - in a country with which they are not in war with, which doesn't have warzone status by any definition.. how the fuck could you get anyone on the hook for this? "it was just a bomb that was supposed to hit a terrorist but which unfortunately missed its target".

Re: Legal aspect

[Badblackdog]

"If it lands anywhere else, it will be Bush's fault." FTFY

Re:Legal aspect

[Anonymous Coward]

If it lands anywhere else, it will be Obama's fault.

I don't care who you blame, but you don't seem to know that this is a European satellite.

Re:Legal aspect

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose it would be, but the Earth is 3/4ths water. The chances of this hitting land, let alone someone's head, is remote.

Re: Legal aspect

[Anonymous Coward]

"If it lands anywhere else, it will be Jean-Jacques Dordain's fault."

FTFY, and educated you while fixing it.

Re:Legal aspect

[Anonymous Coward]

If it lands on someone's head, would it not be, technically speaking, a homicide?

Collateral damage.

How many people die on the roads each year with the excuse "I didn't see them". If people can't be held accountable for that, satellites dropping out of the sky will never be. And they shouldn't be. There are far more danger in the world than orbital experiments so just deal with it.

Re:Legal aspect

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case it's Hitler's fault. (Via Werner von Braun!)

Re:Legal aspect

[Hognoxious]

To be fair, he never claimed to know vere, I mean where, come down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTKn1aSOyOs

Re:Legal aspect

[Anonymous Coward]

If it lands anywhere else, it will be Obama's fault.

I don't care who you blame, but you don't seem to know that this is a European satellite.

You should know by now that American's don't know other countries exist, never mind other space agencies.

Re:Legal aspect

[IwantToKeepAnon]

If it lands on someone's head, would it not be, technically speaking, a homicide?

No, it would not be homicide; it would be ironic. As illustrated by Scott Adams (Dilbert Newsletter 49.0 @ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/972846/posts):

I've also learned recently that "ironic" means anything you want it to mean. Example:

Me: "I heard that Bob was killed by a meteor."

Induhvidual: "Wow. That's ironic."

Me: "Why is it ironic? Was he an astronomer?"

Induhvidual: "No, it's ironic because, you know, what are the odds?"

Me: "So anything unlikely is automatically ironic?"

Induhvidual: "No, it also needs to be bad."

Me: "This conversation is ironic."

Looks like it's going up!

[Yomers]

According to http://www.n2yo.com/?s=34602 satellite is now 174 km above the surface and ascending!

Re:Looks like it's going up!

[Yomers]

Ah it's just elliptic orbit. Anyway TFA says it's 80 km above surface, ~170 km on tracking page.

fall to Earth

[rossdee]

Won't it burn up on reentry?

Re:fall to Earth

[Toad-san]

"The octagonal, 1100-kg satellite with a cross-sectional area of only 1m is configured to keep aerodynamic drag and torque to an absolute minimum. GOCE is symmetrical about its flight direction and two winglets provide additional aerodynamic stability. "

She might just penetrate like a spear, with the front burning away as she slows down. Sounds like she's built very solidly as well. So we should still have a nice big solid chunk of debris for impact. Possibly even salvageable for the museums!

But I'm afraid sleeping in your basement won't make a whole lot of difference.

Re:fall to Earth

[Immerman]

Metal doesn't burn easy, and this is likely moving a *lot* slower than most iron meteors that manage to burn up anyway. Most likely any antennas and other large surfaces will be ripped off by the hot ionized plasma "wind" of reentry, and the main structure itself may be break up as well. But that'll be chaos in action, hard to predict beforehand.

Re:fall to Earth

[qvatch]

Some, but not all of it. http://www.spaceflight101.com/goce-re-entry.html : With its fins and aerodynamic shape, GOCE will maintain a stable position in orbit as it approaches entry. During entry, the spacecraft will likely remain in that position for the initial phase of re-entry until it breaks up. Following the destruction of the spacecraft, most of its components will harmlessly burn up in the atmosphere. However, it is known that about 20 to 40% of a re-entering satellite's total mass reach Earth's surface. Dense components of satellites usually impact 800 to 1,300 Kilometers downrange from the Orbital Decay Point. Their journey back to Earth is strongly influenced by atmospheric properties like crosswinds that play a major role during atmospheric descent.

Re:fall to Earth

[qvatch]

and http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/2013/09/14/european-satellite-goce-uncontrolled-reentry/ his will be the first uncontrolled reentry of an ESA satellite since Isee-2, in 1987. Unfortunately, it will not be the last, considering that the bus-size Envisat’s altitude is gradually decaying in Low-Earth Orbit without control. According to ESA, up to 25% of GOCE’s mass will survive the extreme reentry conditions to fall to the ground. However, the risk for populated areas is very small since the majority of the Earth is covered by oceans. “The major part of what survives to the surface will be the core instrument,” says Dr. Floberghagen. “From the original mass which we have now in space, we have estimated that about 25%, about 250 kilos, will reach the surface, and these 250 kilos will be distributed over between 40 and 50 fragments.” The fragments that survive will hit the ground in a 900 km long footprint. The reentry will be a good test for debris monitoring systems and fragmentation models.

Re:fall to Earth

[GarethIwanFairclough]

Depends on how big it is. Some parts may survive re-entry and cause problems if they land in populated areas.

Re:fall to Earth

[FatLittleMonkey]

With its fins and aerodynamic shape, GOCE will maintain a stable position in orbit as it approaches entry.

Why don't they use the reaction wheels make it tumble before reentry? The higher in the atmosphere it breaks up, the more of the internal components will burn up before impacting.

Re:fall to Earth

[icebike]

Metal doesn't burn easy, and this is likely moving a *lot* slower than most iron meteors that manage to burn up anyway.

Really?
Here's what we send up: http://i.space.com/images/i/000/010/556/original/Sacriflight_AW.jpg?1309195668

Here's all we got back:
http://i.space.com/images/i/000/003/207/original/080228-cs-02.jpg?1292266925

Here's what it looked like coming back:
http://www.wfaa.com/video/featured-videos/RAW-VIDEO--189393891.html

Metal burns just fine, and light aluminum burns extremely well. I once saw a guy welding on the tongue of an airstream trailer, and the structure caught fire. Before the fire department could get there, the entire trailer structure was a white ball hovering above the ground, too bright to look at for more than a second or two.

Re:fall to Earth

[bill_mcgonigle]

Possibly even salvageable for the museums!

Googled since I was curious:

There are no hazardous materials aboard like the hydrazine propellants used on many spacecraft.

So, have fun with your new mancave decoration.

Re:fall to Earth

[icebike]

Interesting how ESA bills this as "good test for debris monitoring systems and fragmentation models", but had a US satellite landed anywhere in the EU, they would be holding investigations, demanding reparations, and publicly chastising NASA for poor planning and reckless disregard of human safety.

Re:fall to Earth

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an aerospace engineer, though I haven't run the math down on this. My guess is that you wouldn't be able to get it to keep tumbling--the shape is fairly aerodynamic and the velocity is too high, so the craft would aerodynamically stabilize until more of it comes apart.

Re:fall to Earth

[Anonymous Coward]

GOCE is/was very special as far as polar orbiting satellites go. Normally they circle at around 650km, but GOCE has been going at around 260km before being lowered to 230km and now heading for Earth.
From the ground segment view, this has some challenges. Firstly the tracking antennas are not designed to track objects this low and the degrees per second you have the track it are on the limits of what we are capable of.
Secondly the RF levels are increasing as the altitude is decreasing. This can saturate the tracking receivers and make it hard to track the spacecraft.

The main problem for GOCE though, is that the spacecraft is close to exceeding the total amount of RF it is allowed to radiate towards Earth per day. This is due to the fact that the signal received on Earth is getting stronger and because ESA is now using more ground stations in the last critical phase.
The teams uploads commands to pacify the spacecraft daily and then cancel them if they are able to reach it on the next orbit. So they go on and on to make sure it is switched off when re-entry occurs.

Re:fall to Earth

[Eunuchswear]

With its fins and aerodynamic shape, GOCE will maintain a stable position in orbit as it approaches entry.

Why don't they use the reaction wheels make it tumble before reentry?

Because it doesn't have reaction wheels.

Krag said that GOCE components that are the typical suspects for surviving re-entry are a tank and magnetotorquers, as the spacecraft has no reaction wheels. "The rest of the components are âunrecognizableâ(TM) incomplete, irregular fragments," he added.

http://www.space.com/23171-european-gravity-satellite-falling-from-space.html

Re:fall to Earth

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm trying to picture 1m of area... does not compute

Re:fall to Earth

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it supposed to land in the US? or are you just having a rant because NASA isn't in the spotlight?

look on the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one less piece of space junk.

Random chance of live/property destruction?

[Barryke]

Time to up my karma..

Re:Random chance of live/property destruction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Schroedinger insurance: When you open to paperwork to check wither you are covered, an exclusion clause spontaneously appears.

Define "irony"

[Anonymous Coward]

"A satellite used to map gravity being destroyed by its inability to resist gravity."

Re:Define "irony"

[Immerman]

It's not gravity that's the problem - it's air resistance. Earth's atmosphere doesn't have a distinct edge, and you have to get pretty frelling far out before the particle count drops low enough not to matter to things going 10,000+mph. Certainly a lot farther than the measly few dozen miles to low Earth orbit.

Re:Define "irony"

[Deadstick]

What Immerman said. A satellite deals with gravity just peachy, but air kills it.

No artificial satellite is completely outside the atmosphere. There are still traces of air even hundreds of miles out, and every time a satellite hits an air molecule it loses an eensy-teensy bit of energy. Each loss makes the orbit a little bit lower, and a little bit faster. (Yes, orbital mechanics is a curious realm where you can slow down by applying thrust and speed up by applying the brakes.) The lower it gets, the more often it hits a molecule, and the energy loss gradually begins to snowball.

You can't predict the precise impact point without precise knowledge of the air density the satellite is encountering, and we don't have that information because it varies with all manner of factors, like solar wind and terrestrial weather. The principal means of prediction is the change in the length of an orbit. When you start seeing a measurable time difference from one orbit to the next, things are starting to happen.At that point, you can predict the time of impact with a precision on the order of weeks, and as time goes on you can narrow it down further.

Right now, we know when GOCE will come in give or take a handful of hours -- and since it can circle the world a couple of times in that interval, we have very little idea of where it will hit. As time passes, the error factor shrinks...when Skylab came in, NASA knew it would hit "somewhere in Australia" three or four hours before it hit.

An intentional reentry is different, because you use a retro-rocket to dump a nice big packet of energy and skip right over the protracted decay time, and make it land where you want.

In the interest of perspective, keep in mind that Nature throws rocks at us from space all the time -- meteors big enough to survive the trip through the atmosphere hit the earth dozens of times per day. Yet there are only a handful of cases on record where a person was injured, or even saw one hit -- simply because you and I and all the other people cover a VERY tiny fraction of the earth's surface. We are little bitty spots on a great big dartboard.

Re:Define "irony"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, well maybe they should've mapped that instead

Re:Define "irony"

[niftymitch]

It's not gravity that's the problem - it's air resistance. Earth's atmosphere doesn't have a distinct edge, and you have to get pretty frelling far out before the particle count drops low enough not to matter to things going 10,000+mph. Certainly a lot farther than the measly few dozen miles to low Earth orbit.

Well the orbital path does make large parts of the globe safe.

That is why Carly and I are flying my jet to Nova Scotia just to be safe.

Re:Define "irony"

[TwoUtes]

It's not a solar eclipse, just a falling satellite.

Re:Define "irony"

[Anonymous Coward]

frelling

Is this an English word? It's absent from no less than three popular English dictionaries.

Re:Define "irony"

[Nimey]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=frelling

Re:Define "irony"

[torsmo]

No artificial satellite is completely outside the atmosphere.

What? Even geostationary satellites?

Re:Define "irony"

[Eunuchswear]

No artificial satellite is completely outside the atmosphere.

And GOCE is deeper into the atmosphere the atmosphere than most. It has wings and an engine. During it's mission it wasn't really in orbit, it was flying. Now the fuel has run out.

Re:Define "irony"

[Deadstick]

Even those, though their lifetimes are much longer.

Re:Define "irony"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the gravity that will cause its demise, it's the eletromagnetic force that destroys it.

Re:Define "irony"

[Askmum]

Which is why I don't understand they let it come down uncontrolled. Wasn't there all this hubbub when ROSAT and Phobos Grunt came down that satellites should have a final fuel supply left to do a controlled de-orbit? And here is GOCE which has engines and at the end of its lifespan was even lowered to make better science... and they let it de-orbit uncontrolled.

Why?

Re:Define "irony"

[Eunuchswear]

Wasn't there all this hubbub when ROSAT and Phobos Grunt came down that satellites should have a final fuel supply left to do a controlled de-orbit? And here is GOCE which has engines and at the end of its lifespan was even lowered to make better science... and they let it de-orbit uncontrolled.

It's because there is science to be done.

-- Glados.

Re:Define "irony"

[niftymitch]

Now that we know the final orbit path Nova Scotia
would have been the best place on North America to
see the satellite. Alaska might have been cool too.

Of interest there were no visual sightings of the final decent
(so far).

The more I think about the decent of large package satellites
the more reason there is to design for reentry perhaps non-reentry.

With autos the design strategy is layers designed to take a licking
shed energy and protect the internal occupant area. With satellites it makes
sense for the reverse and by design minimize the ability of the components
to protect any large internal mass. Perhaps something like exposed
straps not unlike barrel hoops that while strong would
burn up very quickly so the internal bits would spill and fly apart.
Such a design would not decelerate masses like mirrors and tanks
before exposing them at maximum velocity to reentry. Other tricks
might employ plasma channels to allow generated plasma to cut the satellite
apart from the inside out.

Science like this is way cool. As big a fan as I am of deep space discoveries
by the Hubble and tiny space discoveries by the LHC this satellite looked
at the earth. Foundation research like this may help with understanding
all manner of earth local disasters and non disasters....

Now let us hope we do not get smacked back into the stone age by some random asteroid.

Re:Define "irony"

[Wintermute__]

The engine on GOCE was a little ion engine. Not enough thrust to predictably de-orbit where you are aiming. And it was designed prior to the new guidelines that satellites should safely de-orbit, unfortunately.

Re:Define "irony"

[RivenAleem]

Surely at this point it's safe to say Voyager 1 has completely left our atmosphere?

(yes, I know)

Once the rocket is up,

[fustakrakich]

who cares where it comes down...

I'm sure you all know the rest...

Re:Once the rocket is up,

[TeknoHog]

Spoken like a true Braun-nosed underling, just following the orders.

Re:Once the rocket is up,

[Opyros]

So this story should be "from the it's-not-my-dept."

Re:Once the rocket is up,

[knorthern knight]

> who cares where it comes down...

> I'm sure you all know the rest...

Tom Lehrer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V7me25aNtI approx 50 seconds into the video

Re:stereotype

[Anonymous Coward]

You just had to, didn't you. ;)

from the GOCE home page

[Anonymous Coward]

Clarified by Isaac Newton in the 17th century, gravity is a fundamental force of nature.

Here comes the spin: And just as Newton was inspired to invent much of classical mechanics after an apple landed on his head...

National Society's Executive Committe

[oldhack]

"chair of the National Society's Executive Committee", eh?

Fine, I'll say it

[slashmydots]

Really? Nobody thought up this gem yet?
If it was carefully mapping Earth's gravity, shouldn't they know where it's going to land?

Re:Fine, I'll say it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also not very "steady-state" any more.

Re:stereotype

[pixelpusher220]

His Mom made him do it!

cant they Shoot it down

[mattlamb]

would be a good test for those nice missiles they have, blow it up over the ocean!
hope they have insurance if it hits a city...

Quick!

[Kierthos]

Someone get Scott Manley to figure it out using KSP.

Excuse me?

[BringsApples]

Wait now... what the fuck? How is this okay? They're saying that rocket scientists cannot plan such an event? Not even a tiny weency bit of fuel in reserve for re-entry? It's totally ok to allow something to fall onto the planet, possibly killing 1 or more? What if it hits an airline? The article isn't very informative, and leaves you with the assumption that if it hits you or any of your stuff (they specified a Honda?) it's covered by The U.N., and all you have to do is get with your local government. uhh...

Hell, what if it killed Obama?!

Re:Excuse me?

[AliasMrAlias]

RE fuel: Not really; GOCE only has an ion engine which has nowhere near enough (instantaneous) thrust to effect a controlled re-entry (over realistic timescales)

RE prediction:Again, not really - there are too many variables; you can get a landing ellipse once re-entry has begun but before that, for a satellite this size, its really hard to get a handle on things more than a few days in advance.

Having said this, the initial article is a tad misleading, they'll be able to say pretty accurately soon if not now. It's probably fine.

Re:Excuse me?

[FatLittleMonkey]

What if it hits an airline?

Damn I wish people would learn about scale. Or, knowing they don't understand scale, not comment on space related issues.

Re:Excuse me?

[Deadstick]

What if it hits an airline?

Same thing that happens if a meteor hits it...only meteors are more common.

Re:Excuse me?

[BringsApples]

Not sure what you mean, maybe I'm off beat here (out of scale?). But what I'm talking about is the liability involved with putting things into orbit, but not have a sure-fire way to determine where it's going to eventually end up, or not have some safety mechanism in place, like we do with everything else. Maybe it's a lot harder than I can imagine. But who pays the bill if shit goes tits-up, falls out of space, and hits a large airliner killing 250 people?

I didn't mean to offend anyone, much less a fat little monkey.

Re:Excuse me?

[Hognoxious]

What if it hits an airline?

If it's Ryanair I'm sure they'll sting it for something.

Re:Excuse me?

[RockDoctor]

Shock! Horror! There is commercial insurance that covers this sort of thing. Which is priced appropriately to the risk. By people who can do the mathematics.

I'm not privy to the details of their insurance. But do a back of the thumbnail estimate :
[1] number of airplanes that have been hit by falling space debris
divided by [2] the number of airplanes that have fallen out of the sky since 1957 (Sputnik)
multiplied by [3] Warsaw Convention limits on liability for an airline passenger (a couple of hundred thousand dollars ; the number varies from time to time, but isn't as high as you'd think)
= [1] * [3] / [2]
~= 0 * 100,000 / ~ 50

So, to a first approximation, the potential liability is, umm, zero.

The main liability for flight insurance is that of the launch failing in one of several ways. That's around a 10% probability, so for a mid-range science satellite, that would imply an insurance premium of a few tens of millions of dollars. Paid before launch. The liability for landing issues would probably be small change in that premium.

Or they may just choose to not take out insurance. It's far more likely that a field or a rusty car gets hit than an airliner (see above calculation ; several buildings and cars have been hit for some hundreds of satellites coming down and damages of hundreds of dollars ; with an insurance claim excess of a few thousand dollars, it's not worth insuring against).

Try this for shits'n'giggles : estimate the area of the Earth occupied by all the airliners ever made, and then try to draw it to scale on a globe. Then try throwing darts at the globe and see if you can hit your mark at normal dart board range. I bet you wouldn't even be able to see the mark, let alone hit it.

NASA Satellite Falls On Car

[Rick Richardson]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgTyiaDmytw

Re:NASA Satellite Falls On Car

[Anonymous Coward]

Russian satellites does this as well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNbv2CT1uSQ (link is in German)

No fly zone

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to take flight to Asia on Sunday night, maybe I should wait until this baby hits the ground until I travel. It would probably cut the plane in half if it had a direct hit! Mama Mia is nowhere safe these days.

Re:No fly zone

[Anonymous Coward]

If 2 objects like that can collide in mid-air, you shouldn't be mad, that's amazing.

Re:No fly zone

[CanadianMacFan]

Life insurance pays off triple if you die on a business trip.

Re:No fly zone

[RockDoctor]

Mama Mia is nowhere safe these days.

Nowhere was ever safe, any where at any time. Ever.

Have a nice day.

No fly zone

[cbbkelly]

I have to take flight to Asia on Sunday night, maybe I should wait until this baby hits the ground until I travel. It would probably cut the plane in half if it had a direct hit! Mama Mia is nowhere safe these days.

Sunday Night?

[CanadianMacFan]

Which Sunday night would that be? Sunday night with respect to the ESA, Sunday night in Canada since it was a CBC article, or Sunday night where ever the satellite falls? Because Sunday night in Sydney, Australia is different than Sunday night in Seattle, Washington.

Arrr!

[Anonymous Coward]

She?

Re:Arrr!

[Longjmp]

She?

You see, in English language basically everything that can't run away and hide up on a tree on its own is considered female.
And this thing is even flying towards us, which qualifies double, especially for slashdotters.

GOATSE Satellite?

[Anonymous Coward]

Had to say it.

No problem

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as it doesn't contain a toilet seat...

Timezone?

[AmiMoJo]

TFS mentions the times when this thing might come down, but bot the timezone those times apply to. Considering that there is a full 24 hours between extremes of timezone the window is pretty meaningless.

Re:Timezone?

[richlv]

don't scientists use utc for these things ? if not, they definitely should :)

Re:Timezone?

[Anonymous Coward]

don't scientists use utc for these things ? if not, they definitely should :)

Some use UTC, some use TAI and some use TT.

Reason to live

[PopeRatzo]

So you mean there's a chance it could come down on my mother-in-law's head?

Re:Reason to live

[xianzombie]

I hadn't thought of it that way....how quick can we plot its impact and organize a get together for our In-Laws?

Re:Reason to live

[Anonymous Coward]

So you mean there's a chance it could come down on my mother-in-law's head?

About the same chance of hitting your mother-in law's son-in-law...

Re:Reason to live

[Nikker]

Mom is that you?

Re:Reason to live

[PopeRatzo]

As long as it hits one of us, I'm OK.

The fact that thereis not a law

[Anonymous Coward]

Making them be guide-able to the ocean is really scary.
This just fall out of the sky willy nilly is wrong.

Not the solution

[Hamsterdan]

There's probably a better way to research gravity than randomly throwing satellites at the earth...

Re:Not the solution

[AliasMrAlias]

I know you're probably being flippant, but prior to the whole re-entry shenanigans this thing was boss. The gyros alone contain the roundest thing ever built by humans (anecdotal, from my Prof). Ridiculously fine sensing apparatus

Re:Not the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Any research involving gravity and orbits should at least involve balls of steel.

Re:Not the solution

[ignavus]

There's probably a better way to research gravity than randomly throwing satellites at the earth...

Yeah. We should clearly be throwing satellites at the earth in a systematic fashion!

Re:Not the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the current winner for roundness is The Avogadro Project.

Find out if you might get hit

[ral]

Check out the prediction web site to see if it might land near you. Be sure to click the "show all passes" button to see the daylight passes in addition to the night passes. It calculates your lat/long from your ip address, then builds a table of overhead passes in the next 5 days. Look at the "El" column. That's the maximum degrees from the nearest horizon. If you see a number near 90 between Sunday night and Monday morning, watch out. Otherwise, rest easy.

Re:Find out if you might get hit

[Anonymous Coward]

slashdotted :(

captcha: omission

Obvious impact point

[techno-vampire]

Am I really the only Slashdotter who thinks it's going to land in Alaska, killing a camper? And, if I'm not mistaken the casket's going to be really, really weird looking!

My guess...

[ClickOnThis]

...is that it will land in the Philippines. Honestly, those poor suckers just can't seem to catch a break.

All of this has happened before

[Solandri]

All of this will happen again.

I guess most of you weren't around when Skylab fell back to Earth. Skylab was a much bigger satellite, but its equatorial orbit somewhat narrowed down the possible landing site locations. Everyone said it would probably fall into the sea. When pressed why, they'd admit they had no idea where it would come down. It was just that the majority of the surface area of the swath of the earth covered by Skylab's orbital inclination was ocean.

Nowadays they try to maintain enough propellant to steer the satellite into a forced re-entry over the ocean. From what I gather, GOCE only had an ion engine so this wasn't an option.

The conspiricist would have said somebody knows

[Anonymous Coward]

where it is NOT going to land.

but you don't know that either. and THAT makes you angry.
because we are created equal.
and it goes downhill from there.

I'ze be cornfused

[Anonymous Coward]

Is is possible to land on water?
Or is it called watering instead of landing?

Re:I'ze be cornfused

[canadiannomad]

I believe a water landing is referred to "CRASHING INTO THE OCEAN" George Carlin - on airlines and flying RIP

No chance

[Anonymous Coward]

of it landing anywhere near he(*&^%$£$%^&*(

carrier lost

Kind of appropriate ...

[dko1625]

What goes up must come down. But don't expect it to come down where you can find it. - Murphy's Law applied to Newton's.