Here's How to Follow the De-Orbit of Tiangong-1, now Estimated to Happen Between March 30 & April 2

[eppur_se_muova]

Article written: 29 Mar , 2018
Updated: 29 Mar , 2018
by Matt Williams

China’s Tiangong-1 space station has been the focus of a lot of international attention lately. In 2016, after four and half years in orbit, this prototype space station officially ended its mission. By September of 2017, the Agency acknowledged that the station’s orbit was decaying and that it would fall to Earth later in the year. Since then, estimates on when it will enter out atmosphere have been extended a few times.

According to satellite trackers, it was predicted that the station would fall to Earth in mid-March. But in a recent statement (which is no joke) the Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA) has indicated that Tiangong-1 will fall to Earth around April 1st – aka. April Fool’s Day. While the agency and others insists that it is very unlikely, there is a small chance that the re-entry could lead to some debris falling to Earth.

For the sake of ensuring public safety, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Space Debris Office (SDO) has been providing regular updates on the station’s decay. According to the SDO, the reentry window is highly variable and spans from the morning of March 31st to the afternoon of April 1st (in UTC time). This works out to the evening of March 30th or March 31st for people living on the West Coast.



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The Aerospace Corporation has also created a dashboard for tracking Tiangong-1 (which is refreshed every few minutes) and has come to similar conclusions about the station’s orbital decay. Their latest prediction is that the station will descend into our atmosphere on April 1st, at 04:35 UTC (March 30th 08:35 PST), with a margin of error of about 24 hours – in other words, between March 30th to April 2nd.

And they are hardly alone when it comes to monitoring Tiangong-1’s orbit and predicting its descent. The China Human Spaceflight Agency (CMSA) recently began providing daily updates on the orbital status of Tiangong-1. As they reported on March 28th: “Tiangong-1 stayed at an average altitude of about 202.3 km. The estimated reentry window is between 31 March and 2 April, Beijing time.”
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more (incl. several links):https://www.universetoday.com/138892/heres-follow-de-orbit-tiangong-1-now-estimated-happen-march-30-april-2/

[nitpicker]

1. Link to The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/30/chinas-tiangong-1-space-station-will-crash-to-earth-this-weekend

[krispos42]

2. Current prediction: April 1st, 4:30pm EDT, +/- 8 hours

Last edited Sat Mar 31, 2018, 11:42 PM - Edit history (1)

[krispos42]

3. Now it's 10pm, April 1st, +/- 7 hours

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

4. Here's a picture of the station as the last crew left

They stopped to pick up a few kids on the way home.

[krispos42]

5. April 1st 8:18pm +/- 2 hours

[miyazaki]

6. It made a pass over Vegas just earlier this hour.

I'm about 250 miles away as the crow flies. Camera was ready in case it decided to make its fiery re-entry. But apparently, Tiangong still lives.

[caraher]

7. It's down

Reentry Information
Tiangong-1 was predicted to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere on April 2nd, 2018 00:30 UTC ± 1.7 hours. The reentry has been confirmed as 2018/04/02 00:16 UTC. Reentry occurred in the Pacific Ocean.

This prediction was performed by The Aerospace Corporation on 2018 April 1.

from http://www.aerospace.org/cords/reentry-predictions/tiangong-1-reentry/