Space Station to Crash on Europe - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

Talk about what you've seen in the news today.

Moderator: PoFo Today's News Mods

#14899337
I have been wondering where this Chinese space station will land. Some dof Cade’s ago Skylab crashed in Australia, though that was in the West Australian desert, so nobody noticed.

But I don’t think the Europeans need to worry too much. Most of it will burn up in reentry and you’ll only have to worry about large fragments of material coming down over a large area. So the probability of being hit is very low. Not zero, but very low.


https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-03-23/chinese-space-station-likely-land-europe-few-weeks


Chinese space station likely to land in Europe in a few weeks

SciFri
Science Friday
March 23, 2018 · 3:45 PM EDT
By Stephen Schmidt
Producer Alexa Lim

Sometime this spring, a falling Chinese space station will crash to Earth. That is known. What is not as clear is when it will hit — or where.

“Scientists have left it pleasantly vague,” says Maggie Koerth-Baker, a senior science reporter for FiveThirtyEight.com.

Koerth-Baker says that the Tiangong-1 space station will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere somewhere between March 29 and April 9. Furthermore, the landing area covers a lengthy swath of land that includes Spain, France, Portugal and Greece.

The Tiangong-1 was used for basic research for five years, Koerth-Baker says. It actually was the working location of the first Chinese woman in space, she says, before the Chinese lost control of the structure in 2016.

“So now it is descending to Earth without anyone being able to guide it to some other place that’s not populated,” Koerth-Baker says.

Koerth-Baker adds that there is always some sort of “space junk” that is re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

“There’s probably about one piece of space junk that falls to Earth every day,” she says. “Most of it is not this big. The chunks of this space station could be as big as 220 pounds.”

The silver lining, though, is that only one person have ever been recorded as having been hit with a piece of space debris, Koerth-Baker says. That would be Lottie Williams, a resident of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who was struck with a six-inch fragment of a second-stage Delta rocket in 1997. Williams did not sustain major injuries.
#14899340
It can land anywhere on the globe between the equator and the latitude of Rome. But I get why you would like it to go down on Europe, especially on Brussels, oops, that's out off range. No luck this time @foxdemon :lol:

Mind you, you still could be lucky because I'm in full range of the bloody thing, and I don't believe it will all burn up. It's just too big, even if it's only Chinese junk, it's still junk.
#14899345
A lot of it should burn up. The remainder will fragment, so it is a bit like a shotgun blast from the heavens. But the target area is so large that those fragments will be unlikely to hit anyone or anything. Not a zero chance, but most unlikely.
#14899362
What we have here is a failure to communicate. The European Space Agency said

Reentry will take place anywhere between 43ºN and 43ºS (e.g. Spain, France, Portugal, Greece, etc.)

Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2018/03/07/huge-chin ... to=cbshare

ie listing a few of their member countries as examples. The 538 writer left out the useful "anywhere between 43ºN and 43ºS", PRI converted the country list to "likely to crash in Europe", and foxdemon converted that "to crash on Europe".

The chances of it hitting Europe are tiny. Far more likely to hit Africa, South America, the USA, Australia, India or China itself. Most likely to hit the ocean.
#14899408
Obviously, the chances for hitting inhabited areas are small, but it's not impossible. Most of it is sea, but quite a bit of the land area is inhabited, especially in the Mediterranean and India.

For a satellite in LEO (Low Earth Orbit), the space station is massive with nearly 9 tons. There are GEO satellites with 3 to 5 tons, but they seldom reenter. Most LEO satellites only have a few hundred Kg or 1 to 2 tons at most. So yes, some of it may well reach the Earth surface.
#14899420
Huge Chinese space station ‘full of toxic chemicals’ could crash down on Europe this month

Rob Waugh Wednesday 7 Mar 2018 9:47 am

It’s not going to hit Britain, but countries such as Spain and France are potentially in the firing line, according to the European Space Agency.

Image

Rob Waugh and foxdemon must love scaring Europeans. :lol:
#14899463
Atlantis wrote:My bet is on an Australian sheep farmer. Do you have sheep @foxdemon?



Australian farmers already have to dodge falling space junk. I already mentioned SkyLab. Here’s one from a few years back where the Russians dropped their booster on us.

Maybe it is time spacefaring nation’s stopped using Australia as they junk yard.

Anyway, with the Chinese space junk, it could land anywhere. The chance of it landing on Europe is very low. Not zero, but very low.



https://www.smh.com.au/technology/fireball-seen-over-australian-skies-was-space-debris-from-russian-rocket-20140711-zt3pu.html


Fireball seen over Australian skies was space debris from Russian rocket


By Esther Han, Beau Donelly and Bevan ShieldsUpdated11 July 2014 — 11:04amfirst published at 8:07am

The fireball that streaked across the skies of south-eastern Australia on Thursday night was an ejected piece of a Russian rocket used to launch a weather satellite, a leading astronomer says.
NASA issued an alert on Thursday saying a seven-metre, three-tonne, cylindrical object would plunge to Earth over Victoria and Tasmania, said Professor Brian Schmidt, an astronomer at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University.

Shocked Australians believed they were witnessing a plane explosion as a bright light lit the skies from Sydney to Melbourne.
“Orbits of these [pieces of space junk] is monitored quite closely," he said. "This one was decaying rapidly and the prediction of the path was confirmed, because everyone saw it."
The object was the "third-stage" of the Soyuz rocket used on July 8 to launch Russia’s second Meteor-M weather satellite, quashing beliefs it was a meteorite.
One resident Cobar, in western NSW, reported hearing a sonic boom after a five minute delay, which indicated the object disintegrated within 100 kilometres of the town, said Professor Schmidt.

But Dr Nick Lomb, curator of astronomy at Sydney Observatory, said the "main part" of the bright object most likely plunged into the ocean near Brisbane.
Dr Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said data from the Space-Track organisation showed the rocket part re-entered over a track from southern NSW to southern Queensland.
"Break-up is over NSW [near] Canberra but subset of densest debris, if any survives, might have made it to south Queensland," he said.
Dr McDowell had tweeted that the object was: "Object 40077, 3rd stage from Meteor-M launch, reentered over Australia at about 1145 UTC Jul 10".
The fireball has been described as a "massive shooting star" by witnesses in Melbourne and Sydney. It was also spotted by residents in Tasmania and South Australia.
Callers to talkback radio stations reported seeing a bright object travelling east to north about 9.45pm. Some callers said they initially thought it was a burning plane.
Radio station 3AW listener John said he pulled over while driving to watch the light show.
“It was really impressive,” he said. “It had the flame and the intense burn. Just as it was falling away it broke up. I’d say it was a little asteroid or a comet.”
The fireball was a “very rare and exciting” event, said Dr Lomb.
He believed the object was space junk because it was travelling slower than the escape velocity from Earth, which is 11.2km/sec or 40,000km/hour.
“Some people saw it for a 10 seconds or more, which is a very long time for a piece of rock from space, which suggests it could have been space junk,” he said.
Dr Alan Duffy, a research fellow at Swinburne University of Technology, said Australians were lucky to receive the visual feast.

“If the debris had entered our atmosphere a few minutes earlier, it would have burnt up before reaching the mainland and it was a few minutes later, it would have passed Australia and given south-east Asia the spectacular lightshow,” he said.
Dr Duffy expects dozens of people will scour the surrounding areas of Cobar for bits of debris. Any remnants would likely be the size of dinner plates.

“Depending on how tough the space junk is, there will be pieces on the desert floor. I reckon this is going to be a tough find though,” he said. “There are even apps for this, like one called Fireball, which can help you track it down to hundreds of metres.”
The president of the Astronomical Society of Victoria, Ken Le Marquand, said a Melbourne witness reported seeing a meteor going from “horizon to horizon” at 10pm.
“He said it didn't get quite as bright as the moon and was mostly white with a bit of red at the end," he said.
"He said it went for 30 seconds, which is an awful long time. Usually the ones we see in the sky are the size of dust and only last a second. But if you get something a bit bigger, like the size of a pea, it can put on a spectacular light show.”
#14899469
foxdemon wrote:Australian farmers already have to dodge falling space junk. I already mentioned SkyLab. Here’s one from a few years back where the Russians dropped their booster on us.


If this was a helio-synchroneous satellite, they probably launched from Vostochny Cosmodrome. In which case, the orbit shouldn't even be above Australia. The first and second stages usually drop to the ground near the spaceport. That's why it has to go over the sea or uninhibited land. But the 3rd stage doesn't usually drop back to the ground.

Drop zones for Vostochny Cosmodrome

There used to be commercial projects to launch Russian launchers from an old disused British spaceport in Australia, but I think nothing came of it. There is also a venture for launching from a sea platform, but I'm not sure if it's still operational. In any event, that a third stage of a rocket launched from Russia should come down in Australia is highly unlikely.
#14899478
Most perculiar that it happened to land on Australia then.


And there are those strikes that are harder to identify.


https://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/fallen-object-valuable-meteorite-or-worthless-spac/2851911/


Is fallen object valuable meteorite or worthless space junk?

janinehill by janinehill
24th Nov 2015 5:46 PM

IS it a deposit on a house or just loose change?
The mystery object which crashed through the roof of a Little Mountain home last Friday could be a valuable meteorite.

Or it could be a piece of junk.


Meteorites can be worth anything from just a few cents to $100/gram.

If that's what it is proven to be, it could be even more valuable to collectors because of the circumstances in which it was found.

Even the damaged Colorbond roofing sheet could be command big bucks.

Government-accredited mineral, gem and meteorite valuer Tony Forsyth said if the object was proven to be a meteorite, it would be one of less than a handful of "hammer strikes" on Earth this year.

A hammer strike occurs when a meteorite strikes another object.

"There have been two recorded hammer strikes this year, two last year and three the year before," he said.

Mr Forsyth said the object, if proven to be a meteorite, would be even more valuable because it was a witnessed fall.

"Witnessed ones are very, very rare," he said.

Little Mountain resident Zen Collins was on a phone call in the backyard about 1.20pm last Friday when she heard a crash.

She went inside and found the still-warm object on the floor and could see the sky through a hole in the ceiling and roof.


Meteorite crashes into house: Zen Collins holds what she believes to be a meteorite that crashed through their roof in Little Mountain. The metalic chunk of rock smashed through the tin roof, the ceiling and then cracked a tile where it impacted just behind the couch.
The object, which was about the size of a pack of cards, appeared to be a composite of materials, including metal.

It was magnetic and was exceptionally heavy for its size, weighing an estimated 300-400 grams.

Ms Collins is seeking expert advice on the identity of the object.

But Mr Forsyth was cautious about calling the object a meteorite.

"I'm very much doubtful that it's a meteorite - the look of it, the lady's description that she made of it when she found it.

Mr Forsyth said most meteorites had a "crust".

He said a meteorite was unlikely to be hot when found and suggested it would be travelling at a speed loud enough to create a sonic boom.

"It could be space junk, a bit of satellite or an aircraft," he said.

Mr Forsyth said an expert would need to physically examine the object to determine if it was a meteorite.

But the "law of averages" was against it.

"I think there are 20 or so meteorites recorded from Queensland (in total) and possibly only one of these was witnessed," he said.

"... if this is a meteorite then it would be a nickel iron (metallic) one.

"Records show that less than 10% of all meteorites known to fall are of this type.

"The majority are what are called 'stony' meteorites. They look a bit like normal rocks.

"So the chances of a meteorite falling on your roof are slim at best.

"And that it be a metal type one reduces the chances yet another 90%."

Mr Forsyth said he understood the Crown could lay claim to a meteorite under State regulations.
#14899510
Ter wrote:@foxdemon maybe that big rock you have in Central Australia attracts the falling debris ? <joking>

I hope it falls on an aggressive, belligerent nation...


If we could just boost Uluru/Ayer’s Rock into orbit, many more nations would start to take the issue of space junk falling to earth a bit more seriously.

Really, it is just another example of pollution.

But Canada might have more to gripe about than Australia.


First there was the satellite with the reactor...

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/04/02/Canada-settles-with-Russia-for-satellite-crash/7336355035600/


But it hasn’t stopped.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/antares-rocket-booster-space-junk-burnup-over-prairies-highlights-problem-surrounding-our-planet/89986


OUT OF THIS WORLD | Earth, Space and Everything In-Between - a daily journey through weather, space and science with meteorologist/science writer Scott Sutherland

What a Prairies' fireball says about our space junk problem
Mystery fireball in Saskatchewan was Antares rocket booster reentry



Don't miss
'Fireball' caught on camera over Saskatchewan. See it here
WATCH: Fireball turns night into day in Finland
Meteorites found from September B.C., Alberta fireball
Total mass of Earth's 'technosphere' weighs 30 trillion tons
FIND YOUR FORECAST
Search for a locationSearch
Scott Sutherland
Meteorologist/Science Writer
Monday, November 27, 2017, 6:17 PM - As residents of the Prairies witnessed a burning fireball pass overhead late Friday night, they were seeing the evidence of a growing problem around out planet - the increasing amount of junk that is littering space and what happens when it falls back to Earth.

At just around midnight, central time, over Alberta and Saskatchewan, a piece of flaming debris from space slowly tracked across the sky. The event caught the attention of some lucky local residents, some of whom noted that this was not a typical fireball.

A meteor fireball is the bright flash of light that results from a meteoroid entering Earth's atmosphere. These are pieces of ice or rock that have been floating around in space for a very long time, even going back to the birth of the solar system. These meteoroids travel at speeds of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of kilometres per hour, so when they streak across the sky, they are typically gone in a matter of seconds.

Friday night's display was caused by something much, much younger, and something to be far more worried about - a rocket booster, which fell back to Earth after having delivered its payload into orbit.


The trajectory of the rocket as it burned up over Alberta and Saskatchewan. Credit: American Meteor Society

This particular rocket was the Antares booster that carried Orbital ATK's latest Cygnus CRS OA-8E cargo ship, named after NASA astronaut Gene Cernan, on a delivery mission to the International Space Station. Launched on November 12, 2017, the Gene Cernan is still birthed with the ISS at this time, and it is scheduled to leave the station on Dec 4, when it will release a number of cubesats before burning up somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.

The hardware that carried the Gene Cernan into orbit was up in space for just shy of two weeks, making several trips around the Earth, as one of the nearly 170 million pieces of space junk that have been accumulating since the late 1950s.





According to the European Space Agency (ESA), as of January 2017, there's an estimated 29,000 pieces of space debris in Earth orbit that are larger than 10 centimetres wide, 750,000 objects down to 1 cm wide, and 166 million objects smaller than 1 cm. From their records, the US Space Surveillance Network regularly tracks 23,000 objects.

For anyone or anything in space, any of this debris, even one of the millions of smaller bits, is most certainly a concern. A bullet, fired from a modern rifle, can cause enough harm as it travels at around 4,300 km/h. A similarly sized piece of metal from a spacecraft, though, such as one of the bolts that secured a satellite inside its rocket fairing, is travelling at speeds of around 27,000 km/h as it circles the Earth. If that bolt were to hit a satellite, or the International Space Station, or one of the astronauts while they're on a spacewalk outside the station, it could easily cause damage or even death.

Back in April of 2013, when Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield was commander of the ISS, he reported seeing a small hole in one of the station solar panels, due to some piece of debris.


It's unknown whether this was some natural meteoroid or a piece of artificial debris, but the result was the same.

Also, one of the windows of the space station's cupola, where the crew frequently take images of Earth, still sports a chip from a similar impact, as shown in this Tweet from ESA astronaut Tim Peake.





The concern over these impacts, and the potential for disaster from them, was explored by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978. The Kessler Syndrome, named after him, is when the number of space debris objects grows so large that an impact between two objects results in a cascade effect. One impact generates a swath of smaller debris, which goes on to strike other objects, generating even more debris, which strike even more objects, and so on. The result of this could, potentially, destroy every functional satellite and spacecraft in low-Earth orbit, and could also make it impossible to successfully launch satellites afterward, until the debris was eventually thinned out by re-entry into the atmosphere (a process that could take decades). See the movie Gravity for a not-entirely-unrealistic example of this scenario.

Smaller bits of space junk are of little concern for those of us living on the ground. At the speeds they're travelling, they vapourize as they plunge through Earth's upper atmosphere, producing ordinary-looking meteor flashes. Even something larger is unlikely to reach the surface intact, since the atmospheric friction tends to break these apart into smaller and smaller pieces, which are then vapourized. Even if something larger did reach the surface, these objects usually fall over remote parts of the oceans, but this is not always the case.

On January 22, 1997, two pieces of a Delta II rocket second stage, which had launched into space nine months earlier, managed to survive re-entry to crash down in Texas.


This 250 kg stainless steel main fuel tank of a Delta II 2nd stage survived re-entry. Credit: NASA


This 30 kg titanium pressurant tank also survived the same re-entry to reach the ground. Credit: NASA

Noone was hurt in either of these incidences, and according to NASA, not one person has been injured or killed by falling space junk in the decades we have been launching rockets into space. Still, if these two pieces had hit the ground in a more heavily populated area, they would likely have caused significant damage, and people in the vicinity could be injured or killed.

Websites such as Satview.org track these objects, as well as operational satellites and the International Space Station, and they issue forecasts for when orbital debris will re-enter the atmosphere.


Antares rocket body orbital track, and point of re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. Credit: Satview.org

According to that site, large objects enter the atmosphere once every week to two weeks. The next object of concern is China's Tiangong-1 space station, which is currently making an uncontrolled decent, and is expected to re-enter the atmosphere sometime in late March 2018. Satview's current forecast has Tiangong-1 splashing down somewhere in the western Pacific Ocean, however being off by only a few hours, either way, would put it over a vastly different part of the world. This forecast, and the projections of agencies monitoring it (including China's space agency), will narrow this down closer to the time of re-entry.

Re-usable rockets, such as SpaceX's Falcon 9, are one way to reduce the amount of space junk that accumulates, moving forward. SpaceX even has plans to make its satellite fairings (the clam-shell-like structure that surrounds and protects a satellite during launch) recoverable, and they may even pursue plans to make their second stage recoverable as well.

There are also plans being made for various technologies that could reduce the amount of space junk that is currently orbiting the planet. Proposals have suggested everything from satellites capturing pieces with nets or harpoons, to using lasers from ground stations to slow objects so that they fall out of orbit
#14899603
foxdemon wrote:Anyway, with the Chinese space junk, it could land anywhere. The chance of it landing on Europe is very low. Not zero, but very low.

Europe has the least chance of getting hit of all continents except for Antarctica it seems, so ESA works hard for its money indeed and some Anglophones like it. You should rather worry whether it hits a kangaroo in the desert.
#14900460
The highest probability for the impact of Tiangong 1 (the heavenly palace) are places at 42.8 degrees North and 42.8 degrees South because that's were the sinus curves the space station trajectory described on the Earth's surface have their highest and lowest points. There are numerous cities near 42.8 degrees North. For example Porto, Barcelona, Sofia, Beijing, Chicago and Boston. Except for Tasmania, New Zealand and a small strip of South America, most area at 42.8 degrees South is sea.

Exact prediction will only be possible a few hours before impact. The impact corridor could be as long a 1,000 km.
#14900462
If it landed on Beijing, there would certainly be much impetus for them to improve their quality control.

I noticed the space station ground path travels over Syria. Too much to hope that it would land on Assad, I suppose.
#14900467
foxdemon wrote:I noticed the space station ground path travels over Syria. Too much to hope that it would land on Assad, I suppose.


Some people just have to gorge in blood. Haven't the Syrians suffered enough at the hand of Neocon warmongers? Do they have to suffer the inadequacis of Chinese junk imperialism too?

You do realize that an impact corridor of a thousand km is big enough to hit your favorite apartheid regime too even if it were targeted at Damascus?

He is still under checks and balances while other[…]

So the evidence shows that it was almost certainly[…]

Israel-Palestinian War 2023

The claim is a conditional statement. This is one[…]

Russia-Ukraine War 2022

I don't know who are you are referring to, but th[…]