Monday, October 23, 2017

China's First Space Station to Crash


Tiangong-1 is China’s first space station. Launched in 2011, it was originally planned for a controlled crash on Earth in 2013, but its mission was extended to 2016 when eventually telemetry was cut. That year amateur astronomers began to speculate that the Chinese had lost control of the station. China eventually acknowledged this, announcing that the station would re-enter the atmosphere “in the latter half of 2017.” The Chinese currently have no control of a 8.5-ton object moving at 20,000 miles per hour that is going to break up into pieces and crash into unknown spots on this planet.

While most of the 12-metre (40-foot) laboratory will probably burn up in the atmosphere on reentry, chunks weighing up to 100 kilograms (220 pounds) could make it to Earth - and no one can predict where they're going to end up. It’s impossible to really know how dangerous Tiangong-1 could be. At the time of Skylab’s crash, NASA calculated a one in 152 chance that some part of the station would hit a person. The space station was launched in 2011, and hosted three missions, including China's first female astronauts, Liu Yang and Wang Yaping. It was never intended to be permanent, and in March 2016, the Chinese government announced that its time had come to an end. But then in September 2016, Chinese officials confirmed that they had lost control of the station, and it was on a decaying orbit.



Credits:
https://www.sciencealert.com/china-s-first-space-station-is-going-to-come-crashing-down-within-months

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