On Sunday, China’s heavy aircraft carrier Long March 5 launched the Wentian Research Unit into orbit. This is the second module (along with the main Tianhe module) that makes up the Chinese space station Tiangong. Unfortunately, China They have not yet cleaned themselves, that is, they left the worn-out element of the rocket in low Earth orbit. without any control.
Traditionally, private companies and space agencies in Western countries perform de-orbiting and incineration of space debris. The core of the Chinese rocket (due to the presence of a residual atmosphere that prevents it) will soon decay as well, but in an uncontrollable way. Due to the large mass, it will not burn up completely in the atmosphere and will most likely hit the Earth’s surface.
The Chinese missile will hit the ground. Poland outside the “zone of fire”
At first, it was not known where and when an item weighing more than 22 tons could hit. China only announced that it is closely following airline She promised to report the fate of the facility “in due course.” Now it is done by the American non-profit organization The Aerospace Corporation.
Researchers from abroad have decided that the moment of de-orbiting, that is, returning to the dense layers of the atmosphere, should take place on Sunday, July 31 at 2:24 Poland time. They assumed the margin of error was 16 hours in both directions (i.e. from 10:24 on Saturday to 18:24 on Sunday). It is very difficult to estimate when the rocket will eventually fall into the deep layers of Earth’s gaseous atmosphere.
The aerospace company also tried to create maps Show the projected path airline The essence of the rocket at this particular time period. Blue lines on the map show the flight path 16 hours before the estimated crash time, and yellow lines 16 hours after that.
At the estimated time of de-orbiting the missile, the missile should be located over the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula, nearby the border Saudi Arabia and Iraq. However, it will be visible even from areas adjacent to Cairo, central Turkey, southern Caucasus or Tehran.
As can be seen from the map, the area at risk extends about 41 degrees north and south of the equator – roughly from New York, Istanbul, and Beijing in the north to Wellington in the south. So, in the “fire zone” there is about half of the territory of the United States, almost all of China, all of Brazil and India, but only the southern ends of Europe (the regions south of Porto, Naples and Tirana).
Of course, this does not mean that the debris of the missile will specifically hit one of the places below the blue or yellow line on the map. A part of a rocket longer than 50 meters may disintegrate into smaller pieces at a certain height, and some of them will sink larger areas of the Earth. How and where the missile will hit cannot yet be estimated.
Due to the uncontrolled nature of the fall, there is a non-zero probability that the remaining debris will fall into a populated area – more than 88 percent of the world’s population lives below the potential area [upadku -red.] debris. (…) Re-entry [obiektu – red.] This volume will not burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, the general rule is that 20-40%. The mass of a large body will reach the ground, although it depends on the structure of the body
– Wrote in the message On July 26, Aerospace Corporation.
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