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Tiangong-1 space station to crash within weeks


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2 minutes ago, seanjo said:

It's gained height according to the tracker!

Hmm, I wonder why or what makes it gain height. You'd think it would start to drop more.

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4 minutes ago, seanjo said:

It's either instrument/radar accuracy, or the lack of, or the shape of the Earth, Oblate Spheroid...

Oh, ok...that makes sense. 

4 minutes ago, seanjo said:

OR it might just want to avoid Aus!

:D...

Here's a thought. I wouldn't care to be in the space station atm. Imagine the g-forces.

virginmedia03_1.jpg

 

 

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Now its losing 0,1km of altitude every 5 seconds, 15 minutes ago it was 8 seconds. 10kms in 10 minutes, BTW.

Look here

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The Tiangong 1 space station is not in a perfectly circular orbit, so its altitude will vary, going up and down over the course of each trip around the Earth. The perigee (point nearest the Earth) was 171 km, late yesterday afternoon, and is about 158 km this morning. When it reaches 70 km, the end will probably come very quickly. That will likely happen fairly late in the day, on April 1st, or early in the morning, on the 2nd, GMT/ Universal Time.

Edited by bison
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The perigee of space station is now 144 km. Error bars for its fiery end have been narrowed to plus or minus two hours of 0 hours GMT/ UT, April 2nd. That's 6 to 10 p.m. for the East coast of the United States, 3 to 7p.m. for the West, April 1st. The rate at which Tiangong 1 descends will quicken more and more now, as it encounters increasing air resistance.      

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From what I understand, this space station is only 1/10th the size of Skylab. I don't remember offhand how much of Skylab survived re-entry. It sounds like most of this one may not make it through. It will be some light show though.

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1 hour ago, susieice said:

From what I understand, this space station is only 1/10th the size of Skylab. I don't remember offhand how much of Skylab survived re-entry. It sounds like most of this one may not make it through. It will be some light show though.

Estimates say 20-40% could survive to the surface - that's 1.5-3.5 tonnes. That total will be in an assortment of mostly smaller bits, things like fuel tanks can survive intact.

It's currently flying over China, if they had been a bit luckier China could have had it delivered back to them free of charge. Although there's another chance next orbit.  :D 

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This is what it looks like when one of ESA's ATV's, in this case Jules Verne, burns up on reentry:

The  Jules Verne re-entered over the South Pacific, which is where spacecrafts are normally directed at the end of their lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_cemetery

Edited by Noteverythingisaconspiracy
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That's interesting info as I had no idea that there was actually a spacecraft cemetery in the Pacific ocean where they normally directed the re-entry of spacecraft debris. 

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Perigee now 135 km. The decline in altitude still seems to be progressing almost linearly. No sign yet of catastrophic increases in atmospheric friction. SatFlare.com is predicting re-entry by 02:13 GMT/UT., Apr. 2, at the latest.  Many of the satellite tracking websites are no longer updating the altitude of the space station, or are becoming unavailable, or erratic due to high levels of traffic.  

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Satview.com is reporting that the Tiangong 1 space station re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, and was destroyed approximately 5 minutes ago. It's reported that it crashed in the South Pacific Ocean, West of South America. Confirmation of this report, from other sources, is, of course, desirable. 

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2 minutes ago, bison said:

Satview.com is reporting that the Tiangong space station re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, and was destroyed approximately 5 minutes ago. It's reported that it crashed in the South Pacific Ocean, West of South America. Confirmation of this report, from other sources, is, of course, desirable. 

Sound very plausible. Since the Pacific covers over 40% of the Earths surface it was allways the most likely place.

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9 minutes ago, bison said:

Satview.com is reporting that the Tiangong space station re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, and was destroyed approximately 5 minutes ago. It's reported that it crashed in the South Pacific Ocean, West of South America. 

 

I think the satview predicted re-entry was for that time ? if so the graphics may just be showing their prediction rather than what is happening to Tiangong.  

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15 minutes ago, bison said:

Satview.com is reporting that the Tiangong 1 space station re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, and was destroyed approximately 5 minutes ago. It's reported that it crashed in the South Pacific Ocean, West of South America. Confirmation of this report, from other sources, is, of course, desirable. 

Isn't it still too high to come down?

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18 minutes ago, bison said:

Satview.com is reporting that the Tiangong 1 space station re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, and was destroyed approximately 5 minutes ago. It's reported that it crashed in the South Pacific Ocean, West of South America. Confirmation of this report, from other sources, is, of course, desirable. 

Yes, we definitely need confirmation. 

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Reply to Merc 14--It's hard to be certain of that, as altitude figures aren't being reliably updated, and some websites aren't responding. Heavens Above had it passing over South America, on this orbit. It's not clear if they're tardy, or if Satview jumped the gun.

Edited by bison
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2 hours ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

This is what it looks like when one of ESA's ATV's, in this case Jules Verne, burns up on reentry:

The  Jules Verne re-entered over the South Pacific, which is where spacecrafts are normally directed at the end of their lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_cemetery

That was awesome!  Thanks!

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2 minutes ago, bison said:

Reply to Merc 14--It's hard to be certain of that, as altitude figures aren't being reliably updated, and some websites aren't responding. Heavens Above had it passing over South America, on this orbit. It's not clear if they're tardy, or if Satview jumped the gun.

Oh well, I was hoping for a video but great study in orbital decay for folks who never watch this stuff like we space geeks.

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This was posted on facebook and is said to show tiangong passing over Chile at 21:32 

 

 

Edited by L.A.T.1961
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 Response to Merc 14--I was hoping to graph the increasing rate of descent, but the figures became unavailable. If the space station has crashed in such a remote location, it may take quite some time to confirm this.

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Thanks for the video L.A.T.1961. If that was video of the space station over Chile, it hadn't started to break up yet. Does sound like the Pacific will be the target.

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16 minutes ago, susieice said:

I see where it's re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. It may not actually be down yet.

http://www.satview.org/?sat_id=37820U

Yes, the official message from US Stratcom sounds considerably more tentative than Satview's report, which I read before. I think that Satview may have been relying too much on a prediction.

Added-- I see that the US Stratcom message has been amended to give a plus or minus of just one minute, around the supposed time of re-entry. A couple of minutes before, it read plus or minus 120 minutes. This makes it considerably more definite.

I think that 're-entered the atmosphere' means, in this instance, that the disintegration of the space station was believed to have begun.  

Edited by bison
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Vandenberg have confirmed re entry over the southern pacific ocean. 

 

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It perished over the NW of Tahiti according to this.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/space/chinas-outofcontrol-tiangong-1-set-to-crash-into-earth-over-next-24-hours/news-story/960be65c9c36212e311d6a9d1ecb1b3e

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics stated: “North-west of Tahiti - it managed to miss the ‘spacecraft graveyard’ which is further south.

 

 

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