Year of The Duck?
"...duck from March 30 to April 3..."
I could have sworn it was supposed to be Year of the Rooster.
Boffins have refined their estimates of when Chinese space station Tiangong-1 will return to Earth, with the big bird's impact now predicted to happen between March 30 and April 3. With the orbit dipping below 225 km, the Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques (FHR) has also been able to capture …
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Hopefully it will provide a spectacular show on TV for the British National Science Fiction Convention being held in Harrogate 30th March - 2nd April.
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So first the risk it hitting anyone is really really low.
But like space rocks, only big ones can survive atmospheric entry.
You couldn't blow it up in space, that would just add to space junk.
But could you blow it up once it started reentry? Make smaller pieces that would burn up entirely?
Or would that be too complicated, risky beforehand, unhelpful (your smaller pieces would need to be guaranteed to burn up) and ultimately not worth the hassle for very small risks.
Curious about mechanics (not really advocating) because we seem to go through these anxiety spells every so often.
"But could you blow it up once it started reentry? Make smaller pieces that would burn up entirely?"
Why blow it up? You just need to get Thunderbird 2 to "help" it a little and it'll land harmlessly in the sand dunes !!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxnX9KU7_50
and whizz forwards to abt 3:40
Yes, but you really don’t want to.
It’s travelling at around 7km/s, roughly the same speed as an ICBM during reentry. That’s a very hard target to hit. So hard, that the people tasked with designing a solution to that thorny problem decided throwing a bunch of nukes at the inbound object and blowing them up in front of it was the only viable solution.
So, yes, they could blow it up, but it would involve popping a bunch of nukes inside the atmosphere. It doesn’t seem like a better proposition, would confirm defensive tech to “the other side”, and ppl tend to get twitchy when nukes get launched.
Fingers crossed it doesn’t hurt any one. With a bit of luck, given it’s shape, speed and the fact it wasn’t designed to land most of it will be destroyed by the atmosphere. Ofc “most” doesn’t mean much to the folk it lands on :/
Last I heard the impact zone included Michigan.
Should be fine, no-one has ever been killed by space debris and the worst case scenario is that people have to stay indoors for an hour or two.
Interestingly, there's rumors of an AIM-9 takedown if it does threaten anything mainly as a backup if the core doesn't fragment as expected.
The most dangerous parts are the OMU tanks (full of UDMH) and oxygen cylinders, also batteries and outer truss support.
I think the Shenzhou is long gone by now unless they left one attached which wouldn't make a lot of sense for such a small station.
"The most dangerous parts are the OMU tanks (full of UDMH) "
One would assume that one of the last commands sent would be "fire the bloody thrusters and vent all the hydrazine". Having it tumbling would make it more likely to break up.
There really should be a policy of passively activated (heat?) demolition charges on large orbiting objects in case of uncontrollable reentry, even if that means only installing them after the last manned mission leaves (for manned orbiting missions)
ENVIsat is proving to be similarly problematic. Hubble will be an even bigger issue.
Skylab only broke up at 10km altitude and lots of big bits made it to the ground. In particular the 300kg door of the 1 ton (lead lined) aluminium film safe made it all the way to the ground along with the things you'd expect to "waft" like lightweight titanium tanks