China’s space station is out of control could crash to Earth

[lovuian]

http://metro.co.uk/2016/07/11/chinas-space-station-is-out-of-control-and-could-crash-to-earth-in-a-fireball-6000268/

A huge, orbiting Chinese space station could crash to Earth in a deadly fireball, space experts have warned.

Speaking to Space.com last month, several experts suggested that signs hint that the eight-ton Tiangong-1 space station is out of control.

[Ptah]

1. Failure

The Tiangong-1 was launched September 2011 with an intended two year service span, after the last crew departed the module in June 2013 it was put into sleep mode and it is intended that it would remain in orbit for some time allowing China to collect data on the longevity of key components before being commanded to gradually re-enter the atmosphere in the coming months.[58] However 21 March 2016 the Manned Space Engineering Office announced that all telemetry had failed[3] leaving no ability to safely control its descent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong-1#Failure

[lovuian]

2. Yep

no ability to safely control its descent. .....if we get lucky it will land in the ocean

[FSogol]

3. No, if we are lucky, it will land on the Republican Convention...

j/k?

[Throckmorton]

7. Now where did I put my Skylab insurance?

I bought it outside Grand Central Station in 1979. Paid off big if l got hit as I recall.

[milestogo]

4. Trump hates the Chinese.

Maybe it will fall on him.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

5. Seems like a space station would weigh more than 8 tons.

[Act_of_Reparation]

6. Those things are made out of mylar and aluminum.

They have to be light, otherwise the cost of putting them into orbit would become prohibitive.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

8. But unmanned satellites can weigh more than that. I would have guessed anything that was built to...

...support life would be bigger and heavier.
https://www.quora.com/How-big-is-an-average-satellite

[longship]

9. Well, 16,000 lbs is no wee payload.

And in LEO it is not likely to last very long before crashing into the Earth.

BTW, it has been abandoned for years.

[Statistical]

10. As far as space stations go it is pretty small. Smaller than a single module of the ISS.

It is even smaller than Skylab (US single module space station launched in the 70s).

The ISS in comparison weighs 150 tons.

Not throwing shade on the Chinese everyone has to start somewhere but when most people here Space Station they are probably thinking about something an order of magnitude larger.

[doc03]

11. Crash and burn like all the other shit they make n/t

[DavidDvorkin]

12. That's disappointing

I assume -- and very much hope -- that China will keep pressing ahead with its space program despite this setback.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. Or they may still have some control

The full space.com article from last month, as well as quoting Thomas Dorman, also quotes T.S. Kelso, a senior research astrodynamicist at the Center for Space Standards & Innovation (CSSI), a research arm of Analytical Graphics:

Kelso has plotted the altitude history of Tiangong-1 from just after its launch to more recent times. He told Space.com that the Chinese space lab's orbit was reboosted relatively recently, in mid-December 2015.

"That reboost put it higher than it had been anytime prior to that in its mission," Kelso said.
...
If China does indeed have control over the space lab, why keep it in orbit rather than nudging it back to Earth immediately?

"The suggestion has been made," Dorman said, that "the reason China hasn't done a re-entry of Tiangong-1 is, the space station is low on fuel, and China is waiting on a natural decay to a much lower orbit before they can do a burn to bring the station down."

http://www.space.com/33140-china-tiangong-1-space-lab-falling-to-earth.html