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Heads up! Where and when the Chinese space station will crash.

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deluxestogie

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Well, there you go!

Tiangong-1_finalOrbits.JPG


The red orbit is the predicted one.
If it comes down earlier, then its on one of the yellow orbits.
If late, then one of the green orbits.
If you don't have any of those orbits over your location, then No soup for you! [Sorry, Don.]

Bob
 

deluxestogie

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It's still completing one orbit every 88 minutes or so. You could consider each of those orbit lines in my previous post to be about 1-1/2 hours apart.

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deluxestogie

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I believe I misinterpreted the previous orbital map in one regard.

The red orbit is the current one. [It tracks with the real-time orbit from Sky's link.]
If it comes down earlier, then its on one of the yellow orbits.
If late, then one of the green orbits.

Tiangong-1_nearlyGone.JPG


Bob
 

deluxestogie

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My numbers have been incorrect with regard to US Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). I hate this changing of the clocks stupidity! For regular, good old TIME on the US East Coast (EST), UTC, or "zulu" time is 5 hours later. Or the other way around, 0800 UTC is the same instant as 0300 EST. But when we "spring forward", so the halt and lame won't miss the sunshine, 0800 UTC is the same instant as 0400 EDT. So, I screwed it up with the space debris, not that it's going to hit the eastern US anyway. Thus endeth my rant.

The train schedule says it will begin to burn up at 0030 UDT plus or minus something. That turns out to be, now that my eyes have been opened, 8:30 pm (EDT) on the East Coast. So that's about 1 hour from now (plus or minus something).

The orbit takes about 90 minutes. But once the altitude hits below 100 km (~62 miles), then it will burn and crash. Given the time prediction, we're already into the final orbit. The altitude is already below 120 km, and decreasing.

Tiangong-1_finalOrbit.JPG


If it is delayed, then it has a chance on landing on Damascus, Syria.

Bob
 

deluxestogie

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Hmmm. Skychaser, your site (http://heavens-above.com/GroundTrack.aspx) is still showing the Tiangong-1 sailing merrily along at an altitude of 134 km at this very moment (9:30 pm EDT).

According to http://www.aerospace.org/cords/reentry-predictions/tiangong-1-reentry/ "The reentry has been confirmed as 2018/04/02 00:16 UTC. Reentry occurred in the Pacific Ocean." That would have been at 8:26 pm EDT.

So it's absolutely still up there...or absolutely not. (Tobacco growing is easier.) BUT.. at around 8:26 pm EDT, the aerospace.org site still indicated that the Tiangong-1 altitude was around 118 km, which seems incompatible with a confirmed reentry.

Bob
 

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It must still be tracking the alien ship that was following it. Everything else I am finding says the space station reentered the atmosphere at 5:16 pdt and broke up over the south pacific near Tahiti
 

deluxestogie

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Heavens-above.com said:
Tiangong 1 Re-entry
We've had quite a few e-mails from people asking why our ground track display is still showing the position of Tiangong 1 after the re-entry has been widely reported in the media. It seems many people have been confused by the words "real-time display".

http://heavens-above.com/Tiangong1Reentry.aspx
What more can I say?

Bob
 
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