Europe's GOCE satellite re-enters Earth's atmosphere

A European Space Agency satellite re-entered the atmosphere early Monday after completing its mission of mapping Earth's gravity, ESA officials said. The space agency posted on its website that the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer satellite, or GOCE, re-entered Earth's atmosphere about 1 a.m. CET on a "pass that extended across Siberia, the western Pacific Ocean, the eastern Indian Ocean and Antarctica. "As expected, the satellite disintegrated in the high atmosphere and no damage to property has been reported," ESA officials said. The space agency posted earlier that it had made contact with the descending satellite from the Troll station in Antarctica at 11:42 p.m. Sunday, noting its central computer temperature at the time was 80 degrees (176 degrees Fahrenheit) Celsius and its battery was at 84 degrees Celsius (183 degrees Fahrenheit). "At an altitude of less than 120 kilometers [74.5 miles], the spacecraft is -- against expectations -- still functional," ESA officials said. On an even earlier pass, the officials noted the spacecraft "was still showing amazing system performance and delivered highly valuable data to the ground station." The ESA said GOCE, dubbed the "Ferrari of space" for its sleek, aerodynamic design, nearly tripled its planned service life since its launch in March 2009. It eventually ran out of fuel, precipitating its gradual fall back to Earth. GOCE mapped variations in Earth's gravity "with extreme detail," the space agency said. The information allowed scientists to create the first global high-resolution map of the boundary between Earth's crust and mantle, or Moho, and to detect sound waves such as those from the massive earthquake that struck Japan in March 2011.