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Spying From On High

Pick up your dirty laundry; the European Space Agency is planning to launch most sophisticated explorer satellite in history and it's looking at you. Okay, not exactly. But the launching GOCE (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer) will be looking at the Earth more closely than any technology has previously. On Wednesday, September 10th the European Space Agency is launching the sat from an aeronautics station in northern Russia. GOCE will piggyback on a Russian rocket and be released 160 miles from Earth, a relatively low altitude when it comes to space exploration, but nevertheless impressive considering the spacecraft weighs one ton. Once released from the rocket launcher, GOCE—which looks like a five-meter long white Lego piece, flat on either side with a capsule running the length of the middle—will synchronize itself in orbit with the sun and get to work.