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Old March 25th, 2018 #1
Ray Allan
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2014
Posts: 15,170
Default Defunct Chinese space station to fall to Earth

Quote:
China's Tiangong-1 space lab will likely fall to Earth between March 30 and April 2, according to the latest prediction by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Space Debris Office in Darmstadt, Germany.

This window is "highly variable," not ironclad, Space Debris Office representatives stressed in the updated forecast, which was issued yesterday (March 21).

Tiangong-1 was lofted in late September 2011, to help test the docking and rendezvous technologies required to build a bona fide space station, which China aims to do by the mid-2020s.

The first Chinese orbital docking occurred between Tiangong-1 and an unpiloted Shenzhou spacecraft on Nov. 2, 2011. Two piloted missions were subsequently completed to visit Tiangong-1: Shenzhou-9 and Shenzhou-10, in June 2012 and June 2013, respectively.

...it's unknown where exactly Tiangong-1 will fall back to Earth. But given the spacecraft's inclination, it will re-enter somewhere between 43 degrees north and 43 degrees south latitude.

Owing to the Chinese station's mass and construction materials, there is a distinct possibility that some portions of Tiangong-1 will survive the fiery journey through Earth's atmosphere and reach the surface, experts say.
https://www.space.com/40064-china-ti...d-reentry.html
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Old March 26th, 2018 #2
Ray Allan
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Join Date: May 2014
Posts: 15,170
Default

Video is from the European Space Agency's first Automated Transfer Vehicle Jules Verne planned reentry over the Pacific Ocean after a resupply mission to the International Space Station in 2008. Tiangong-1 is similar in size to ATV, so its reentry will look like this. The only difference is TG-1's is an uncontrolled entry, so it's difficult to pinpoint exactly where it will come down. Since 70 percent of Earth's surface is covered by water, chances are good it will come down there and not over any inhabited areas. When Skylab, the first US space station, made its uncontrolled reentry in 1979, pieces of it fell on western Australia. However, Skylab was a much larger object than TG-1, which is why so many parts of it survived all the way to the ground.

__________________
"Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy."

--Henry A. Kissinger, jewish politician and advisor
 
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