An out-of-control space laboratory that is to plunge back to Earth in the coming days is unlikely to cause any damage, Chinese authorities said, but would offer instead a “splendid” show akin to a meteor shower.
China’s space agency on Thursday said that the nearly 8-tonne Tiangong-1 would re-enter the atmosphere some time between today and Monday.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has a smaller window between midday today and early tomorrow afternoon GMT.
Photo: Reuters
However, there is “no need for people to worry,” the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) said on its WeChat social media account.
Such falling spacecraft do “not crash into the Earth fiercely like in sci-fi movies, but turn into a splendid [meteor shower] and move across the beautiful starry sky as they race toward the Earth,” it said.
The lab was placed in orbit in September 2011 and had been slated for a controlled re-entry, but it ceased functioning in March 2016 and space enthusiasts have been bracing for its fiery return.
Beijing sees its multibillion-dollar space program as a symbol of the nation’s rise.
It has plans to send a manned mission to the moon.
China sent another laboratory into orbit, the Tiangong-2, in September 2016 and hopes to turn it into a crewed space station by 2022.
Experts have downplayed any concerns about the Tiangong-1 causing any damage when it hurtles back to Earth, with the ESA saying that nearly 6,000 uncontrolled re-entries of large objects have occurred over the past 60 years without harming anyone.
The CMSEO said the probability of someone being hit by a meteorite of more than 200g is 1 in 700 million.
During the uncontrolled re-entry, atmospheric drag would rip away solar arrays, antennas and other external components at an altitude of about 100km, the CMSEO said.
The intensifying heat and friction would cause the main structure to burn or blow up and it should disintegrate at an altitude of about 80km, it said.
Most fragments would dissipate in the air and a small amount of debris would fall relatively slowly before landing, most likely in the ocean, which covers more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, estimated that the lab is the 50th-biggest uncontrolled re-entry of an object since 1957.
“Much bigger things have come down with no casualties,” McDowell said.
“This thing is like a small plane crash,” he said, adding that the trail of debris would scatter pieces several hundred kilometers apart.
At an altitude of 60km to 70km, debris would begin to turn into “a series of fireballs,” which is when people on the ground would “see a spectacular show,” he said.
China plans to step up efforts to coordinate with the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs as the re-entry nears, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang (陸慷) told reporters yesterday.
“I want to highlight that we attach importance to this issue, and we’ve been dealing with it very responsibly in accordance with relevant laws and regulations,” Lu said. “What I’ve heard is the possibility of large amounts of debris falling to the ground is very slim.”
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