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Questions tagged [goce]

Questions regarding the European Space Agency's Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer, also known as GOCE.

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5 votes
1 answer
146 views

What "unique control system" modulated GOCE's thrust to compensate for variable atmospheric drag? How did it know how to modulate it?

This answer to How much time did the longest maneuver last? says: The GOCE satellite mission (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer) lasted 55 months (4.6 years) of largely ...
uhoh's user avatar
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6 votes
2 answers
2k views

Exactly how "Ferrari-like" was GOCE? Was its drag coefficient as low as the car's?

This comment mentions: This relation between drag and mass is taken to a relative (for satellites) extreme in GOCE which I think needed to be close to Earth to accurately sense the changes in gravity,...
uhoh's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
170 views

Relation between GOCE gravity model and Earth shape

There are a couple of viral videos claiming that "NASA shows that Earth is shaped like potato". The source of such videos is 3D visualization of data collected by GOCE satellite (full animation, video ...
fresheed's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
170 views

Is GOCE designed to break up in the atmosphere?

Soon, ESA is planning to deorbit GOCE, letting it burn up in the atmosphere. It seems this has been the plan for a long time - so why won't the satellite be completely annihilated into pieces small ...
user avatar
9 votes
3 answers
441 views

How can all of GOCE's pieces land in a 20 square yard area?

I was reading this article, and noticed this statement: The chances that a chunk of GOCE or any other space debris will injure anyone are tiny, but not zero. Floberghagen said the debris will ...
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9 votes
2 answers
3k views

Why do malfunctioning satellites come back to Earth?

In school, I learned that if a satellite moves at a speed $\sqrt{gR}$ (the square root of the product of the acceleration due to gravity and radius of the Earth), then it will remain in Earth's orbit. ...
SpringLearner's user avatar