A drawing of the Tiangong-2, a Chinese Space Station
Earlier this year, Beijing's Tiangong 1 satellite burned up over the South Pacific after spending months locked in a death spiral. Now Tiangong-2, its sister craft, was spotted diving 60 miles toward the surface of our planet before mysteriously climbing back to its usual orbital height.
The strange movements suggest China has a plan for its spaceship. Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Space News: 'It seems likely that the lowering of Tiangong-2's orbit is the first step in safely disposing of it.'
McDowell also published several tweets about the second space station's 'weird' behaviour in which he suggested China could be testing out the craft's engines ahead of a scheme to steer it to a fiery end in Earth's atmosphere. The 10.5m long and 3.4m wide Tiangong-2 dipped from its usual height of 242 miles on June 13 and dropped to 183 miles.
Although you probably don't want to be standing anywhere near Tiangong-2 if it crashes to Earth, it may give you some comfort to know that falling man-made space debris has never killed a human here on Earth.
Tiangong-1 was packed full of the toxic chemical hydrazine which can result in irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat as well as dizziness, headache, nausea, pulmonary edema, seizures and even coma in just small doses.
However, no-one was hurt when it burned up over the vast Pacific Ocean.
Reader Comments