Astra-1K was designed to transmit communication signals for radio, television, mobile telephones and the Internet. The French-made communications satellite -- the world's largest -- launched into space on November 26.
The satellite's destination had been the geostationary orbit, which is some 23,000 miles above the Earth's surface. After the "upper stage of a [Russian] Proton K rocket failed to work as expected", however, the satellite was lodged at an altitude of 109 miles (Proton Upper Stage Fails, Leaves Astra 1K in Useless Orbit).
Since then, European mission control guided the satellite back into the earth's atmosphere, and to an untimely, if dramatic, death--today, the six-ton device dropped into the waters of the Pacific Ocean.
BBC coverage is here.