European Satellite to fall on Earth; When and Where Uncertain

Be careful while stepping out this weekend as a European satellite is expected to fall on earth in the next few days. It is uncertain where it will fall. Debris, weighing as much as 200 pounds will reach the surface, scientists say.

The satellite, Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer, or GOCE (pronounced Go Chay) completed its mission and ran out of propellant in October. The satellite's job was to map the earth's gravitational field, The New York Times reported. GOCE orbits directly over the poles, which means that all places on earth are directly beneath it at some point of time.

 "It's rather hard to predict where the spacecraft will re-enter and impact," said Rune Floberghagen, the mission manager for the European Space Agency's GOCE told the New York Times. "Concretely our best engineering prediction is now for a re-entry on Sunday, with a possibility for it slipping into early Monday."

This isn't the first satellite to fall on earth. In 2011, media was abuzz with stories of NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite descent on the planet. In the same year, Russia's Mars mission went awry and crashed into the Pacific.

Anyone who has watched the Sandra Bullock- George Clooney space drama flick 'Gravity' knows that space debris is a huge threat to geostationary satellites. Scientists usually direct redundant satellites to a graveyard orbit, which is just above the GEO orbit. Other satellites are dropped back to earth using specialized equipment to a place called Spacecraft Cemetery.