Get ready for expected fireballs falling to earth on Easter Sunday. In case you haven’t read the news as yet, the Chinese space station Tiangong -1 filled with toxic crap is all set to lose its orbit and plunge down to earth from space. The Chinese government issued the notification sometime last week and is not even sure where it is going to fall.
The Chinese space station named Tiangong 1 which means “Heavenly Palace” is China’s first space lab measuring 34 feet. It is almost the size of a school bus and weighs 8.5 tons. Although China has tried to reassure the world that there is nothing to be alarmed about, they themselves are relying on guesswork where it may fall. However, people from USA to India might just give a fireworks display of the debris reentering the earth’s atmosphere and crashing goodness knows where.
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Previously according to the Chinese space agencies, the estimated time of re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere is on Easter Sunday the 1st of April at precisely 2pm GMT. Various space agencies around the earth have supplied different timings. Aerospace Corp has pegged the latest timings as 7:25 PM EDT or 23:25 GMT. So it’s safe to pull up a chair on your porch from 11pm at night with a nice hot cup of tea and wait there to see the show which may stretch into the early hours of Monday morning.
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The orbit of Tiangong is slowly taking it extremely close to the earth’s atmosphere. If the sun is more active, the solar winds will impact the atmospheric drag pulling the craft faster into the earth’s orbit. But this is why scientists feel it may also be delayed by a few hours or it may fall slower than usual as the solar activity is now weaker than expected.
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Most of the craft is expected to burn up when reentering the earth’s atmosphere due to high degree of friction but 40% of its mass will survive and plunge down to Earth.
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The craft could crash into the ocean or even populated cities such as New York, Barcelona, Beijing, Chicago, Rome, Toronto or Istanbul. If that doesn’t scare you, then what’s even more worrying is the fact that the so-called Heavenly Palace called Tiangong -1 is full of toxic chemicals called hydrazine which is an ingredient used in rocket fuel? Long-term exposure to hydrazine can even cause cancer.
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China has stated that there is little risk of large debris falling to earth. In a press release, their foreign ministry said that the UN space agency is being updated about Tiangong-1 and that China has adopted a transparent and responsible stance towards the problem. Spokesman LU Knag said ‘If there is a need, we will promptly be in touch with the relevant country,’ he said. ‘As to what I have heard, at present the chances of large fragments falling to the ground are not very great, the probability is extremely small.’
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Tiangong -1 is a space lab measuring 34.1ft long and weighing 9.4 tons. It was commissioned n 2011 for the purpose of docking and orbiting experiments and a precursor experiment to Chinas ambitions of placing a permanent space lab in orbit as early as 2023. However, Tiangong-1 was decommissioned in 2013. In spite of doing so the country kept extending its use to the point where scientists believe that it has actually gone out of control and lost its orbit.
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Tiangong -1 consists of a resource module which houses the jet propulsion systems powered by solar energy and another experimental module that can accommodate astronauts and work. It even has two beds but no bathroom.
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There have also been manned docking missions to the space lab in June 2012 and June 2013. Each mission named Shenzhou 9 and Shenzhou 10 consisted of three crew members and lasted two weeks.
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Tiangong -1 was meant to be operational for two years only. After Shenzhou 10, China disabled its functions and had planned to de-orbit the lab guide it back safely to earth but in March 2016, they revealed that they had lost control and no data was being transmitted from the lab.
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This means a controlled re-entry is no longer possible and the Spacelab would now be pulled into the earth’s atmosphere by atmospheric drag.
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Tiangong -1 is not the first large object to fall from space. The record breakers was the huge Russian space station Mir weighing `140 tons that crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2001 but that was a controlled re-entry. NASA’s 85 ton Skylab crashed to earth in July 1979 scattering huge chunks of debris all over Western Australia leading o the town of Esperance suing NASA for $400 littering. What makes Tiangong’s crash to earth more significant and worrisome is that it is also an uncontrolled re-entry and no one knows exactly where it will hit.
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Even as you read this Tiangong is hurtling towards earth at 16,500 mph at a height of 180 km above earth’s surface. Once it falls below 100km, its energy load will turn into heat and the craft will be almost ripped apart by aerodynamic force. But 1.5 to 3.5 tones of the spacecraft will survive and where that hits is a big question.
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It could reach the surface of the earth with dozens of pieces strewn over hundreds of miles. What’s most dangerous is the fuel tanks that contain rocket propulsion fuel called Hydrazine.
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Said Holger Krag head of the European Space Agency in Darmadst, “If you’re in the right place at the right time, and the sky is clear, it will be quite spectacular, it will be visible to the naked eye, even in daylight, and look like a slow-moving shooting star that splits into a few more shooting stars. You might even see a smoke trail.”
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