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ALL THE PLACES TIANGONG-1 WONT LAND (AND WHERE IT STILL MIGHT)
Wired:NO ONE KNOWS exactly when or where China's abandoned Tiangong-1 space station will return to Earth. But the map on Ted Muelhaupt's computer gives him a better idea than most. "I'm looking at it right now, and it's telling me the vehicle's not gonna land in Quito," he says. The date is Thursday, March 29, around 12:30 Pacific—63 hours before Muelhaupt predicts the 18,000-pound spacecraft, which is roughly the size of a school bus with wings, will reenter the planet's atmosphere, break apart, burn up, and rain down in bits and pieces on the earth below. "It looks like most of Texas is safe. Southern Florida, too. Although, at this resolution, I can't say for certain whether northern Florida is clear."
Muelhaupt is an engineer at Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded R&D organization, where he manages the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies. Among his group's specialties are simulating uncontrolled reentries of spacecraft like Tiangong-1 and predicting when and where they will plunge from the sky. Think Chicken Little, minus the alarmism, plus a lot more math.
On Muelhaupt's computer screen is something aerospace types call a ground track: a map of Tiangong-1's current and future path above Earth's surface, traced out in sigmoidal lines. The space station's last known position above the planet is marked with a red X, its present orbit with a red curve. Surrounding it are more curves (depicting projected orbital paths), which overlap into a basket-weave pattern that spans 43 degrees north to 43 degrees south.
"Tiangong's going to land somewhere under the basket weave," Muelhaupt tells me. "But all the gaps in the basket are safe. If you're not under one of those lines, you're not gonna get hit."
Muelhaupt is an engineer at Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded R&D organization, where he manages the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies. Among his group's specialties are simulating uncontrolled reentries of spacecraft like Tiangong-1 and predicting when and where they will plunge from the sky. Think Chicken Little, minus the alarmism, plus a lot more math.
On Muelhaupt's computer screen is something aerospace types call a ground track: a map of Tiangong-1's current and future path above Earth's surface, traced out in sigmoidal lines. The space station's last known position above the planet is marked with a red X, its present orbit with a red curve. Surrounding it are more curves (depicting projected orbital paths), which overlap into a basket-weave pattern that spans 43 degrees north to 43 degrees south.
"Tiangong's going to land somewhere under the basket weave," Muelhaupt tells me. "But all the gaps in the basket are safe. If you're not under one of those lines, you're not gonna get hit."
One of the orbital paths seems to clip Boston and Chicago; another goes by Seattle...
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