Dubbed the "Ferrari of space" because of its sleek looks, Goce is the first Esa mission to make an uncontrolled re-entry in more than 25 years.
The gravity mapping probe's plunge was inevitable once it ran out of fuel.We wonder if it met its CAFE standards, before;
A signal from Goce was last acquired at 22:42 GMT on Sunday as it passed 121km (75 miles) above Antarctica. Data from the United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) indicated that re-entry occurred a little over one orbit of the Earth later, with the spacecraft starting to break up at 00:16 GMT on Monday at an altitude of about 80km.
This would have put any debris fall in the South Atlantic just east of Tierra Del Fuego.
"Goce survived for a few minutes longer than we expected - but since re-entries are difficult to predict, this is not very surprising," Holger Krag from Esa's Space Debris Office told BBC News.It had to be destroyed in order to save the environment, as it was one of a series of innovative environmental research satellites. ONE:
Statistics show that there is typically at least one piece of space "junk" re-entering the Earth's atmosphere every day; with, on average, one intact defunct spacecraft or old rocket body coming back every week.