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An 8.5-tonne Chinese space station has accelerated its out-of-control descent towards Earth and is expected to crash to the surface within a few months.
The Tiangong-1 or "Heavenly Palace" lab was launched in 2011 and described as a "potent political symbol" of China, part of an ambitious scientific push to turn China into a space superpower. It was used for both manned and unmanned missions and visited by China's first female astronaut, Liu Yang, in 2012.
But in 2016, after months of speculation, Chinese officials confirmed they had lost control of the space station and it would crash to Earth in 2017 or 2018. China's space agency has since notified the UN that it expects Tiangong-1 to come down between October 2017 and April 2018.
[...] Although much of the craft is expected to burn up in the atmosphere, McDowell says some parts might still weigh up to 100kg when they crash into the Earth's surface.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday October 19 2017, @05:45AM (3 children)
Tiangong-1 was a small test station.
TG-1 had a pressurized volume of 15 m3 (530 cu ft). Compare to the ISS: 931.57 m3 (32,898 cu ft). If the ISS is ever deorbited entirely, I'm sure a lot of people will be pissed off. So far, it is planned to operate until 2024, possibly 2028.
Tiangong-3 was cancelled, its objectives having been fulfilled by Tiangong-2.
Tiangong-2 is bigger than TG-1, but not by much. It's unclear whether they will burn it or use it as the basis for the "large orbital station" [wikipedia.org]. That's the big one, but it looks like they plan to burn that one [wikipedia.org] after 10 years. Careful with the Wikipedia articles, not all of them reflect the fact that Tiangong-3 has been cancelled.
If we don't want stations to be deorbited and burnt, we should make sure to standardize modules so that they can be easily attached to each other, removed, etc. (imagine a future in which these modules are almost always reused as parts of patchwork station creations). We should look into new propulsion options such as VASIMR [wikipedia.org], EmDrive, or a Mach effect thruster [nextbigfuture.com] to try to raise the stations out of LEO or reduce the need for propellant resupply. Barring that, we find new ways to get lots of propellant to LEO, such as SpaceX's tanker [wikipedia.org] or ULA's Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage [soylentnews.org]. If we can move stations to the Moon, they can stay in orbit there nearly forever without needing extra propellant.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday October 19 2017, @06:13AM (2 children)
Thanks.
Admittedly, I was ignorant of the purpose of the station.
I remember MIR and SkyLab coming down. Seemed like such a shame after all the effort we expended getting all that stuff up there.
Maybe by more modern standards, its a shack, but it is up there, even if delegated for use as a warehouse.
Wish I had a good modpoint for you.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday October 19 2017, @06:24AM (1 child)
10 a day wasn't enough after 6 hours? Lol.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday October 19 2017, @07:57AM
Yup, I did... I read some good stuff today and went through them pretty fast.
There are a lot of very good people here that take the time to post quite good stuff, as you just did.
Stuff I can't get anywhere else. You know exactly what I mean. Too much stuff is written by "social influencers". Some are good enough to fool me for a while. Most of the folks posting here don't have a dog in the fight and will be much more objective.
Anyway, it seemed such a waste to me to send manufactured stuff into orbit, only to let it come back down. To me, its like a small cabin in the woods, but in space, there isn't much else around. Looks like a neat place to stash stuff for later use, or nudge it to other space construction and use it as a "tool shed" or whatever. Its already out of Earth's gravity well. And we burned a helluva lotta fuel to get it up there.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]