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tiangong1

China launched its kickoff space station in 2022, and managed to successfully use it intermittently for several years longer than originally planned. Now, the Tiangong-1 module is heading for a crash landing on Earth. However, China doesn't know exactly when it'south coming downwardly. That has fed speculation that all advice with the module has been lost, meaning it could come down almost anywhere.

The all-time estimate of reentry Cathay has given is sometime in the second half of 2022. That would signal a slowly decaying orbit. Mainland china announced in March that it had lost telemetry and guidance control of the satellite, only it had not played host to astronauts since 2022, so there was no firsthand danger. However, some astronomers worried aloud that Tiangong-1 was completely inoperable and could exist dropping out of the sky at whatever moment.

Prc's statement (delivered by the government-backed Xinhua news agency) says that the module is intact and orbiting at an altitude of 230 miles (370 kilometers). This at to the lowest degree implies that it knows exactly where the station is, and will be able to predict its landing closer to the event. When it hits the atmosphere, much of Tiangong-i will break up into tiny fragments. There may still be some segments equally large as 100 kilograms, which could cause existent impairment if it fell on a populated expanse. However, the odds of it actually getting close to anyone or anything important are slim. Statistically, information technology'south likely the debris will just impact the body of water. Red china says information technology volition monitor reentry for and dangerous objects.

crew-enters-tiangong-1

Chinese crew aboard the Tiangong-1.

If China has completely lost contact with the station, at least Tiangong-one is on the small side. At just only 18,753 pounds, it provided crews 15 cubic meters of space. The International Space Station has over 900 cubic meters of pressurized space, not including the new experimental Bigelow inflatable module. Unlike the ISS, Tiangong-1 didn't have the facilities for constant habitation. It was originally used to test docking systems in 2022; and then crews were able to return to the module for 11 days in 2022 and xiv days in 2022.

Mainland china successfully launched the Tiangong-2 station into orbit last week. It'southward considerably larger than Tiangong-1, and will host 2 astronauts adjacent month. They'll stay on board for a month to exercise research. The Tiangong-three station will follow this one in a few years, and will serve every bit a platform to test the final technologies Communist china needs to perfect earlier launching a permanent orbital station in the early 2022s.