China’s space station to crash into Earth in next few weeks

Just a quick update. A Chinese space station that’s hurtling toward Earth like an out of control fireball is expected to make its final descent in the next few weeks. So, head’s up for that!

Launched in 2011, the 8.5-tonne Tiangong-1 was China’s first space laboratory and prototype space station. Over the original planned operational time of two years, the Tiangong-1 underwent three dockings, hosted two manned missions, and experienced one orbital maintenance mission.

Following that time, the space-lab was put into sleep mode, where it has remained in orbit for the last four years or so.

But now, the Tiangong-1 is falling back to Earth, and, back in 2016, China’s space agency was forced to admit that it had no control over where or when the craft would crash land.

The European Space Agency has been keeping close watch over the Tiangong-1 and now estimates that the space station will fall out of orbit sometime between March 29th and April 9th.

Meanwhile, its re-entry could occur anywhere between 43 degrees north latitude and 43 degrees south latitude, making a large number of countries, from the United States to Australia to China, potential crash sites.

And, as renowned Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell points out, it will be extremely difficult to predict which nation will be the unlucky one.

Of course, it’s most likely that the Tiangong-1 will fall harmlessly into the ocean. There’s also the chance that the station could burn up in the earth’s atmosphere before causing any damage, though, McDowell has said that he expects some parts of the space craft, possibly weighing up to 100kg, to make it to the earth’s surface.

Still, it’s probably nothing to worry about. Probably.

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