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Chinese Space Station Burns Up On Re-entry in South Pacific (reviewjournal.com)
cold fjord writes: Chinese space authorities say the defunct Tiangong 1 space station mostly burned up on re-entry into the atmosphere over the central South Pacific. The China Manned Space Engineering Office said the experimental space laboratory re-entered around 8:15 a.m. Monday. Scientists monitoring the craft's disintegrating orbit had forecast the craft would mostly burn up and would pose only the slightest of risks to people. Analysis from the Beijing Aerospace Control Center showed it had mostly burned up. Launched in 2011, Tiangong 1 was China's first space station, serving as an experimental platform for bigger projects, such as the Tiangong 2 launched in September 2016 and a future permanent Chinese space station. Two crews of Chinese astronauts lived on the station while testing docking procedures and other operations. Its last crew departed in 2013 and contact with it was cut in 2016.
Good that it was like skylab no harm to anyone.
Just buy another one! Cheap shit. Made in China. Whadayaxpect?
Not even "lucky", harming someone would have been very unlucky.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
As opposed to the French, who are putting Sarkozy in jail.
Those 'Muricans have no balls, I tell ya.
That 08:15 would be Chinese time (UTC+8),
https://www.space.com/40101-china-space-station-tiangong-1-crashes.html
They're just slow to realize what's going on - in this case, Trump and his bitch beta sons going to prison for a loooooong time.
08:16 Beijing Time means 8:16 am in the morning, Beijing Time
8:16 pm EDT means 8:16 pm, at night (or evening, which ever way you wanna call it), EDT
Like all Chinese electronics, it is highly probable that the control failure can be traced back to poorly screened capacitors.
Right, they could plan that because they were 100% certain that all the fuel and thrusters would survive re-entry.
Uhuh.
No sig today...
just burn a little sooner, before they would get damaged... when it starts to enter the atmosphere, to give it a little push
Higuita
Don't forget to get back Sandra Bullock. She's ours!
Hope Patti LuPone wasn't in the cast.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
The whole point of the uncontrolled re-entry was that they had no communication link, thus no control over the vessel.
Of course it landed in the region of lowest payout! And I put all my bets into it landing somewhere in the vicinity of 37.485,-122.148. There goes my life savings!
They probably lost communications with it during a systemd patch update.
Even minutes before the splash-down Western authorities were saying that the Tiangong-1 spaceship was aiming for the Atlantic, off the coast of Brazil, at 00:49 GMT, or so
No. I was following this one, and most of the authorities were actually saying we don't know exactly where it will hit, here's the latest update and the best guess for impact, which was always a wide range.
At the very end they were saying "it will enter on this orbit, here's the ground track"-- and the final orbit's ground track passed over the South Atlantic, continued over South Africa, and went on to the Pacific. Where on that final orbit it would hit depended very sensitively on exaclty how it was oriented and how much drag and how early it would start to break apart, something difficult to predict for a relatively simple satellite and very very hard to estimate for something as complex as Taingong-1. Nobody was giving exact predictions "it will land here."
"Methinks the Chinese had some spare fuel left on board"
It's possible, but radar confirmed it was tumbling pretty badly so it's unlikely that it had a lot of power and even if its systems were active timing the burn to coincide with the tumble would have been difficult. Still, its reentery area (the South Pacific is the go to area for deorbits) would seem to suggest some kind of control, a lot of luck or a combination of both.
I mean, why does a musical need crashing burning space stations???
Do we know they had no communications link to the station? The Chinese are notoriously tight lipped about their space program, they could have been talking to the station. Though there is every indication that the station was disabled (broken reaction wheels, reaction control thrusters, etc) in some way (it was tumbling badly), but that alone does not completely prove its communications system were dead. Use of an omni-directional communications method would limit communication but still allow some degree of control if there was any to be had.
..it wasnt the House of the Elders burnt to a crisp. I hope Russia nukes those old chinks and decapitates China for 200 years...
Subject: Nigerian Astronaut Wants To Come Home
Dr. Bakare Tunde
Astronautics Project Manager
National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA)
Plot 555
Misau Street
PMB 437
Garki, Abuja, FCT NIGERIA
Dear Mr. Sir,
REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE-STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL
I am Dr. Bakare Tunde, the cousin of Nigerian Astronaut, Air Force Major Abacha Tunde. He was the first African in space when he made a secret flight to the Salyut 6 space station in 1979. He was on a later Soviet spaceflight, Soyuz T-16Z to the secret Soviet military space station Salyut 8T in 1989. He was stranded there in 1990 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. His other Soviet crew members returned to earth on the Soyuz T-16Z, but his place was taken up by return cargo. There have been occasional Progrez supply flights to keep him going since that time. He is in good humor, but wants to come home.
In the 14-years since he has been on the station, he has accumulated flight pay and interest amounting to almost $ 15,000,000 American Dollars. This is held in a trust at the Lagos National Savings and Trust Association. If we can obtain access to this money, we can place a down payment with the Russian Space Authorities for a Soyuz return flight to bring him back to Earth. I am told this will cost $ 3,000,000 American Dollars. In order to access the his trust fund we need your assistance.
Consequently, my colleagues and I are willing to transfer the total amount to your account or subsequent disbursement, since we as civil servants are prohibited by the Code of Conduct Bureau (Civil Service Laws) from opening and/ or operating foreign accounts in our names.
Needless to say, the trust reposed on you at this juncture is enormous. In return, we have agreed to offer you 20 percent of the transferred sum, while 10 percent shall be set aside for incidental expenses (internal and external) between the parties in the course of the transaction. You will be mandated to remit the balance 70 percent to other accounts in due course.
Kindly expedite action as we are behind schedule to enable us include downpayment in this financial quarter.
Please acknowledge the receipt of this message via my direct number 234 (0) 9-234-2220 only.
Yours Sincerely, Dr. Bakare Tunde
Astronautics Project Manager
tip@nasrda.gov.ng
http://www.nasrda.gov.ng/
Xiao
Awww I was really looking forward to some space station parts....
These are all really good ideas. Hey should have crashed it into the moon. So that we donâ(TM)t run out of space rockets.
Our outlook is collapsing. We should be heading outwards and wanting to be heading outwards, not waiting for Game Of Thrones until we're living in a similar set-up. We should be hearing news about off-planet living, instead we're laughing at the president's gibberish on Twitter. Putting a space station on the moon would give SOMETHING to work with on the lunar surface. Why are we being so accepting of letting the space programs go half-way then falling into failure?
Yes there was still fuel on board. The spacecraft was dead. The power system failed, so there was no communication with it. So no thruster firings were possible. If they had been, it would have made far more sense to use them to steepen the descent far earlier to increase the probability of the landing zone.