Posted on 11/06/2025 11:00:13 AM PST by Red Badger
Looks like china is getting its own Apollo 13 mission...
The Daily Mail has the details:
Three astronauts already in space for six months are now stranded in orbit after their craft may have been damaged by dangerous debris floating around Earth.
China's Manned Spaceflight Agency (CMSA) has revealed that crew from its Shenzhou 20 mission will need to stay on board the Chinese station Tiangong.
The team of astronauts scheduled to relieve the first group had already taken off and were on their way to swap out with them, but the astronauts aboard the space station discovered a potentially serious problem.
Astronauts Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui, and Wang Jie have been on Tiangong, which means Heavenly Palace, since April, completing science experiments, carrying out space walks, and living in zero gravity.
At some point before the trio officially handed over the station to the Shenzhou 21 crew on November 5, the capsule the astronauts were supposed to use to return to Earth was struck by an unknown object in Earth orbit.
The collision left a noticeable mark on the space vehicle's hull, leading the team to fear Shenzhou 20 may have also sustained internal damage that could endanger their flight home.
The crews will have to conduct an extensive inspection to determine whether the craft can be safely operated for a return trip home.
Though it's not known what exactly it was that struck the spacecraft, it could be any of the estimated 19,000 pieces of "space debris" or the 11,000-plus other still-operational satellites in orbit around the earth, which travel at average speeds of 17,000mph.
If Supreme Leader Xi needs some help getting his boys home, I know a guy!
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Wong Wei unavailable for comment.
Maybe. It depends on the two relative velocity directions: A very small parts in a polar orbit is going to be more important than an equal sized particle also in a equatorial orbit. (Almost no satellites - and thus particles - are in a reversed east-to-west orbit. But those particles coming from explosions and test impact are random directions - if they are not quickly absorbed by the atmosphere.)
And it depends where the impact occurs. On a window or sealing surface at a hatch or a hatch locking mechanism or instrument receiver/sensor is more important than one into a blank hull section.
I have someone in mind can help
That, and a universal dock design.
...struck by an unknown object in Earth orbit...
1) It ain’t Boeing, this time.
2) Can they send up an empty, man-rated spacecraft?
3) Can Dragon dock to the chicom space station?
It won’t work.
BRAVE AI:
A 0.01 gram of sand travelling at 50kmph is about 2500 Joules of energy, an amount of energy comparable to what a powerful handgun round can carry, potentially causing severe injury to a person even if the energy is absorbed by a bulletproof vest.
Because I used to live 50 miles from Cape Canaveral, I have been interested in news about space flight for nearly all of my life. This is the first time I have heard of trouble on a Chinese mission. Supposedly all of the other Chinese missions went perfectly, if you can believe the Xinhua media.
By the way, I know some people think Xi Jinping looks like Winnie-the-Pooh. Is that why Pooh is in the above photo?
Yes.
“3) Can Dragon dock to the chicom space station?”
Nope.
Read again, carefully. Each crew has its own spacecraft. The old crew's spacecraft got hit. The new crew's spacecraft is fine. That works out to 6 "Taikonauts" and 3 seats.
Dragon and Soyuz work the same way on ISS.
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do
Dr. Musk...Pick up Line 3 please...
No need to panic, then. The solution is obvious.
“3) Can Dragon dock to the chicom space station?”
Russia and the USA standardized hatches back in the 60’s for emergencies such as this. I don’t know if the Chinese followed suit.............
On one Space Shuttle mission, there was visible damage to one of the front-facing windows; this appeared when the shuttle was in orbit. When they got back on the ground, the windows was removed and the damage carefully examined.
The particle that caused it was extracted and analyzed using advanced techniques (neutron activation analysis among them) and was determined to have been man-made; a tiny flake of paint from some other spacecraft.
It would be karma if the debris came form that satellite China blew up leaving much junk in orbit.
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