China's space station to crash Sunday 1 April (1 Viewer)

[Dennis Nicholls]

Really not an April fool's joke.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weat...mbling-toward-an-easter-sunday-crash/70004550

Since it's tumbling erratically no precise time or location. It may fall between 42.8 degrees N and S.

Boise is north of 43 degrees N so I'm in the clear here. Howzabout you?

Update for 6 p.m. EDT: Tiangong-1 is now forecast to re-enter Earth's atmosphere on April 1 at 12:15 p.m. EDT (1615 GMT), give or take 9 hours, according to the Aerospace Corp.

 

[dvdclon]

This all takes me back to 1979. Around the start of the year, Jeane Dixon's predictions for the year appeared in the Sunday supplement of my local paper. One of those predictions was that Pierre, South Dakota would be hit by death from the skies. I live in the Deep South, so it meant nothing to me.

Jump forward 7 months and I was in Pierre for a two week gig and the imminent and unpredictable return to Earth of the Skylab 1 space station was in the news. I decided it was going to impact the Oahe Dam north of town. Since Oahe Lake is the fourth largest artificial reservoir in the United States, I assumed that I was done for. Fortunately, Australia got in the way and saved us all.

I hope the Tiangong-1 re-entry turns out to be similarly uneventful.

 

[Rodney]

Update for 10 a.m. EDT: New re-entry forecasts by the European Space Agency and Aerospace Corp. have shifted the time of Tiangong-1's expected crash to between Sunday evening and early Monday (April 2). ESA officials are targeting 7:25 p.m. EDT (2325 GMT) Sunday as the likely time, while Aerospace Corp. forecasts a 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT) crash, give or take 8 hours.

 

[Stan]

Surprised they don't just shoot it down like they did a few years ago, scattering millions of pieces of debris that endanger every satellite being launched. It will be decades or more until that junk falls back into the atmosphere and burns up.

 

[Tony Bensley]

Surprised they don't just shoot it down like they did a few years ago, scattering millions of pieces of debris that endanger every satellite being launched. It will be decades or more until that junk falls back into the atmosphere and burns up.

Perhaps they realized the error in judgement regarding shooting down the previous satellite?

 

[Rodney]

Update for April 1, 10:38 am EDT: New re-entry forecasts by the European Space Agency and Aerospace Corp. have shifted the time of Tiangong-1's expected crash to between late Sunday and early Monday (April 2). ESA officials are targeting a crash time between Sunday evening and early Monday morning. The latest update from the Aerospace Corp. forecasts an 8:10 p.m. EDT (0010 April 2 EDT) crash, give or take 2.5 hours.

 

[Stan]

Update for April 1, 10:38 am EDT: New re-entry forecasts by the European Space Agency and Aerospace Corp. have shifted the time of Tiangong-1's expected crash to between late Sunday and early Monday (April 2). ESA officials are targeting a crash time between Sunday evening and early Monday morning. The latest update from the Aerospace Corp. forecasts an 8:10 p.m. EDT (0010 April 2 EDT) crash, give or take 2.5 hours.

The scary part is there is no way to control its re-entry. Hopefully it lands in an ocean, but could easily hit a city anywhere in the world.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Both US and Chinese agencies confirm crashing in the south Pacific off South America.

http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world...ation-tiangong-1-as-it-plummets-to-earth.html

 

[Stan]

Thankfully it crashed in the ocean. Unlike Skylab,which came down in Australia.

Scary to think these things are up there and will eventually randomly crash to earth. Most of them burn up, but some of the pieces hit the ground.

 

[Walter Kittel]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/04/chinas-heavenly-palace-returns-to-earth-and-burns-up/

- Walter.