New Delhi:
The Chinese space lab – Tiangong-1 may soon smash into the American State of Michigan on April 3, according to a report in Metro.co.uk.
Tiangong has been into news since 2016 when scientists at China's space agency admitted that they lost control of lab, saying that it wold be crash-landing on Earth.
“The space station is moving along a decaying orbit. It should re-enter our atmosphere in the next few weeks, so we have just a few more chances to observe it,” Masi says in a blog post. “Some surviving debris could fall to Earth’s surface, with large uncertainties as for the exact location.”
As experts are watching the path of the station saying that it had been behaving strangely and has now put an end to the months of speculations.
The Aerospace Corporation estimates the space lab will reenter Earth’s atmosphere “somewhere between 43 degree North and 43 degree South latitudes.” While the European Space Agency (ESA) approximates it will begin its violent descent sometime between March 29 and April 9. The space agency also noted that Spain, France, Portugal, and Greece are all potential crash sites, but they couldn’t get any more precise than that.
Asian country's first space station was launched in 2011 and was hailed as a political symbol of China's growing power and is now said to come crashing down to Earth in few weeks. However, no predictions were made about where the 8.5-tonne module will be hitting.
Besides Michigan, analysts have also identified Northern China, central Italy, northern Spain, the Middle East, New Zealand, Tasmania, South America, southern Africa, and northern states in the US as the regions with a high chance of impact.
The concerning part about this is that Tiangong-1 is being claimed to pack a toxic and corrosive chemical called hydrazine.
It has also been claimed that Tiangong-1 is said to have a pack of a toxic and corrosive chemical called hydrazine.
The chemical is used in rocket fuel and long-term exposure is believed to cause cancer in humans.
As per the Metro report, although most of the craft will burn up when it ploughs into the atmosphere, between 10 and 40 percent of its mass could survive and plunge to Earth.
According to Aerospace, a space research non-profit based in California, ‘There is a chance that a small amount of Tiangong-1 debris may survive and impact the ground. Should this happen, any surviving debris would fall within a region that is a few hundred kilometers in size and centered along a point on the Earth that the station passes over,’ Metro.co.uk reported.
