An 8.5-tonne Chinese space station called the Tiangong-1 (“heavenly palace” in Mandarin) that’s currently orbiting Earth is expected to make a fiery re-entry into our atmosphere early next year.
The good news is that most of the craft should burn up on its way through the atmosphere, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). The bad news is that some fragments could fall within the latitude range of 43ºN and 43ºS — an area that encompasses European and Asian cities. That includes Singapore too.
ESA expects the unmanned space station to have its orbit decay sometime between January and March 2018, when it’ll make an out-of-control re-entry back to Earth. Measuring 12m long with a diameter of 3.3m, the Tiangong-1 has been unoccupied since 2013, and no contact has been made with the craft since last year.
The exact time and location of the reentry cannot be ascertained. “The date, time and geographic footprint of the reentry can only be predicted with large uncertainties. Even shortly before reentry, only a very large time and geographical window can be estimated,” says Holger Krag, Head of ESA’s Space Debris Office.
What’s frightening is that there’s a possibility that some portions of the craft will survive and come crashing into the surface of the Earth, due to its mass and construction materials. Experts, however, assure that there’s nothing to worry about.
“We have been making a special case of examining Tiangong-1 because of likely public and media interest in a re-entering space station; not because it is a particularly dangerous re-entry,” said Andrew Abraham, a senior member of the nonprofit The Aerospace Corporation to Newsweek.
ESA will continue monitoring the cosmic event and update civil authorities where needed. It also stated that no casualties have ever been confirmed due to falling space debris in the history of spaceflight, but we really wish there was something more reassuring than that.
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