The Goce satellite has no fuel and it will fall back to Earth ... - TF1

class=”title SZ11 c7″> The GOCE satellite was launched in 2009 to measure the gravity of the Earth. / Credits: ESA

The countdown has begun. The satellite Goce is out of fuel, announced Monday the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES). His tank 41 pounds no longer contains any of xenon, a noble gas which served as fuel. The spacecraft, launched in 2009 to measure the gravity of the Earth, should fall on our soil by one to two weeks, according to estimates by the French space agency. “We are entering the phase of monitoring the return to Earth,” said Fernand Alby to MYTF1News, head of the space debris and space surveillance activities at CNES.

Now that the tank is empty, the engine has stopped growing. The satellite will then begin to lose altitude and begin its return to Earth, but the date and venue where the 5-m long and 1 ton will fall unknown.

Fifty fragments

The danger for the population is very low. “The risk of being hit by a spacecraft debris is 65,000 times smaller than that of being struck by lightning,” according to Christoph Steiger, CEO of Goce, the European Space Agency (Esa).

A quarter of the mass of the satellite is 250 kg, should survive re-entry of the device into the atmosphere. It should then disintegrate into fifty fragments, according to Christoph Steiger.

Read also: the Goce satellite will soon crash into Earth: five questions on a crash