Posted on 10/18/2017 7:11:18 AM PDT by MtnClimber
China’s 8.5-ton Tiangong-1 space station, originally launched in 2011, has seen its orbit rapidly decay and is now expected to hit the Earth in the next few months, the Guardian reported.
Chinese officials told the UN in 2016 they had lost the ability to correct the station’s altitude and expected it to plummet to the ground between October 2017 and April 2018. But Harvard University astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told the Guardian it now is entering the atmosphere at an even more accelerated timetable, and will probably see its demise in the earlier part of that range.
“Now that [its] perigee is below 300 kilometers [186 miles] and it is in denser atmosphere, the rate of decay is getting higher,” McDowell said. “I expect it will come down a few months from now—late 2017 or early 2018.”
He added there is a small chance chunks of the station weighing up to 220 pounds (100 kilograms) could remain intact and hit the ground at high speed.
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
We should commandeer it and boost it to a safer orbit and use it as our own.
Interesting:
“Chinese space agency spokesman WI Tu Lo stated that the two astronauts, Ho Li Fuk and Sum Ting Wong, were safely returned to earth using a reusable craft.”
According to the forecast made by Satview.org, the object’s reentry will occur in Saturday, 28 Apr 2018 at 18:03 UTC.
Didn’t a toilet seat hit her in the head?
Can you Chinks aim it a Chappaqau?
Yup, from Skylab
I’ll post that suggestion to Elon Musk’s twitter :-)
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