A spent satellite that had been mapping the Earth's gravity has mostly disintegrated after re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.

An estimated 25% of the one-tonne satellite reached the Earth's surface according to the European Space Agency (ESA), which said "no damage to property has been reported".

ESA's Space Debris Office confirmed that fragments made landfall in the southernmost regions of the South Atlantic.

Scientists had predicted that several fragments from the Gravity Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE), some weighing about as much as a car engine, would survive contact with the atmosphere.

The craft was put into orbit in 2009 on a mission to monitor variations in gravity and sea levels.

However, its mission came to a natural end when it ran out of fuel on October 21, leaving it without power to maintain its altitude in low orbit.

The £292m mission lasted twice as long as its initially scheduled 20 months.

ESA said the satellite, which earned the nickname 'Space Ferrari' because of its sleek design, re-entered the atmosphere around midnight GMT on Sunday on a descending orbit that crossed Siberia, the western Pacific, eastern Indian Ocean and Antarctica.

GOCE was designed and built before 2008, when international recommendations that a scientific satellite must be able to execute a controlled re-entry or burn up completely after its mission were adopoted.

Heiner Klinkrad, head of the Space Debris Office, said: "The one-tonne GOCE satellite is only a small fraction of the 100-150 tonnes of man-made space objects that re-enter Earth's atmosphere annually.

"In the 56 years of spaceflight, some 15,000 tonnes of man-made space objects have re-entered the atmosphere without causing a single human injury to date."