CHINA'S SPACE LAB TO CRASH EARTH - EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW!

CHINA’S SPACE LAB EXPECTED TO CRASH EARTH BY THIS WEEK

This photo was released by the China’s Xinhua News Agency. It shows a Long March-2FT1 carrier rocket loaded with Tiangong-1 unmanned space lab module that blasts off from the launch pad at the Jiuguan Satellite Launch Center in the Northwest China's Gansu Province at Thursday, Set. 29^th, 2011.

China’s prototype space station, Tiangong-1 or “heavenly place”, is expected to fall to Earth and could re-enter the atmosphere as soon as this week.

Tiangong-1 has entered its final phase of life on March 16^th and Officially Stopped sending Data.

The Tiangong, or Heavenly Palace is orbiting at an average height of about 216.2 kilometers from the Earth but it did not disclose any re-entry location. A Chinese Aerospace expert stated that it is impossible to name the exact re-entry location at the present stage. He also told that the approximate re-entry location cannot be decided until the last 120 minutes before it starts to fall.

The Chinese Space Station was launched in September 2011. Tiangong-1 had a experimental design life of nearly Two Years. The Heavenly Vehicle successfully docked with the Shenzhou-8, Shenzhou-9 and the Shenzhou-10 spacecrafts and also undertook a series of experiments. The Space lab completed its main missions following the return of Shenzhou-10 in June 2013.

Tiangong-1 conducted experiments in Space Technology, Space-Earth Remote Sensing and Space Environment Exploration during its extended flight. China plans to finalise its space station to the rival Mir, the Russian Spacestation in the current orbit by 2022.

SHOULD WE WORRY FOR IT?

The Answer is “No”. The probability of being hit by the part of the space station are basically zero.

As 70% of the Earth is covered with water, the chances for the space station to hit any living ground is probably said to be low.

Till now there are no records of any Space lab that has hit the land surface in earth.

WHERE WOULD IT CRASH?

The Space Lab is Currently orbiting at about 27,000km/h, so a crash site of it is impossible to predict.

The satellite can only re-enter within the latitudes of its orbit – 43° North and 43° South. That rules out a descent over the UK but it does cover much of the Earth, including vast stretches of China, North and South America, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, some parts of Europe and the great swaths of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Because of its specific orbit, it is more likely to impact at the edges of that area near the northern or southern latitudes.