ESA's Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mission will end this year. It has begun its decent towards Earth and will be reentering our atmosphere probably in mid-October. Having nearly tripled its planned lifetime, this Gravity field and steady-state mission has successfully mapped variations in Earth’s gravity with extreme detail.
ESA reports: "Scientists further exploited these data to create the first global high-resolution map of the boundary between Earth’s crust and mantle – called the Moho – and to detect sound waves from the massive earthquake that hit Japan on 11 March 2011, among other results."
