The launching of ESA’s GOCE (Gravity Field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer) satellite from the spaceport at Plesetsk in Russia took place on March 17th 2009. This revolutionnary Earth Explorer spacecraft will study the Earth’s surface and core. Over its lifetime of about 20 months, GOCE will map the global variations in the gravity field with extreme detail and accuracy.

As subcontractor of Advanced Computer Systems, SPACEBEL has contributed to the GOCE project with the development of the Test Data Generator (TDG), which is used to provide test data for the PDS (Payload Data Segment) part of the Ground Segment.

The GOCE mission includes a little bit of Belgian technology signed “SPACEBEL”.