So let me see if I have this right. A really cool looking bucket is an a kind of 'free fall', plumemting towards a hot and fiery death at the rate of 20.6096 double decker busses per day all because of a feeble blue flame engine that can only produce 0.0001 Norris since they only took up 9.5238 Jubs worth of Xenon.

Seems to me that flying around a planet at about 0.1575% of the maximum velocity of a sheep in a vacuum at an altitude of 2024.8018 brontosaurus requires more energy than that.

"All being well, the engines will - as part of the Drag-Free and Attitude Control Subsystem (DFACS) - automatically maintain GOCE's velocity and altitude while the scientists get down to the job in hand. ."

What job is that then? Watching re-entry fireworks?

This article states both "This thrust represents a "fantastically small force" of between 1 and 20 millinewtons (mN), but that's enough to maintain GOCE's "free-fall" orbit - currently decreasing at a rate of around 190 metres a day from an altitude of roughly 280 km."

and then goes on to say:

"All being well, the engines will -... - automatically maintain GOCE's velocity and altitude while the scientists get down to the job in hand."

OK, either this thing is in free-ball and losing altitude, or the engines are going to maintain a set altitude...it can't be both, not correctly. (The engines COULD maintain the satellite's altitude LOSS to a given rate, but that is not the same as maintaining altitude.)

Author, clarity please?

Surely Rune Floberghagen is a serious contender for the much sought-after "Best Name In Science" award?

First off, in the context of orbital mechanics "free-fall" does not connote losing altitude. Orbits allow you to do what Douglas Adams suggested in "Hitchhikers Guide": "The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." When in orbit, you are constantly falling around the Earth and, hence, missing it and this is the essence of free-fall.

As for the explicit statement that the orbit is "currently decreasing at 190 meters per day". The key word in the phrase is "currently" as in before the ion engines are fired for real (as opposed to test firing) in order to do the needed station keeping. The implication is that once the engines are continually firing, they will be enough to keep the orbit from degrading any further so long as they remain operational

That said, I will agree that the phrasing in the article does not exactly help one to parse it correctly.

Yeah, heaven forbid any of us should learn new words as we go through life. Let's dumb down everything, starting with El Reg! We're none of us really techies anyway, right? Just glorified typists really.

This attitude amazes me most because when reading an internet article you have Google RIGHT THERE to look anything up. You don't even have to get up off your arse to look this shit up now.

OTOH any of you guys fancy a game of Scrabble?