China's Tiangong-1 Space Station Will Fall Soon and Scientists Aren't Sure Where It'll Land | The Weather Channel
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Space

Despite researchers' assurances, some people are still worried they may get hit with falling space junk.

ByAda Carr
March 12, 2018Updated: March 12, 2018, 1:19 pm EDTPublished: March 12, 2018, 1:19 pm EDT


The image above shows China's Tiangong-1 space station. It's expected to plummet back to Earth and researchers aren't sure where its pieces will end up.

(CMSE/China Manned Space Engineering Office)


China’s Tiangong-1 space station is going to plummet from the sky soon, and scientists aren’t sure where it’s going to end up.

Predicted to fall back to Earth sometime between now and April, the spacecraft will almost completely burn up as it passes through the atmosphere, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).

Researchers are still trying to figure out when Tiangong-1 will drop and the exact spots where debris could fall.

"It’s challenging to predict the time of re-entry, and even more challenging to get the location," Aerospace Corporation technical staff senior member Dr. Andrew Abraham told NBC News. "One thing we do know is that [Tiangong-1] will reenter between 43 degrees north and 43 degrees south latitude, but beyond that, we don’t know the precise location."

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Stations on Earth have been tracking Tiangong-1’s movements, but as its orbit begins to die out, it’s getting harder to follow. Scientists won’t be able to predict the possible debris path until about two days before the spacecraft drops, NBC News also said.

"Once it starts to break apart, each of the pieces will fall along the track, but they can be spread out by several hundred miles," said Ailor.

Researchers say the falling bits are a low risk for people on the ground, but some are still worried they may get pelted with debris.

"It’s much more common to be hit by lightning," Aerospace Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies principal engineer Dr. William Ailor told NBC News.

There’s a one-in-a-trillion chance that someone will be hit by debris from a space object reentering our atmosphere, according to Aerospace. The odds of being struck by lightning, on the other hand, are roughly one in 1.4 million.

To date, the only person to have been hit by falling space object debris is Lottie Williams, who was walking through a Tulsa, Oklahoma, park with friends when space junk hit her shoulder in January 1997, Fox News reported.

"The weight was comparable to an empty soda can," Williams told Fox News. "It looked like a piece of fabric, except when you tap it, it sounded metallic."

Researchers determined the fragment came from a Delta II rocket’s fuel tank that was used to launch an Air Force satellite in 1996.

As of mid-January, Tiangong-1 had reached an orbit altitude of about 174 miles, which will inevitably cause it to decay, according to the ESA.

The 34-foot long spacecraft was launched Sept. 30, 2011 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China.

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