{"id":3963,"date":"2019-07-22T10:13:32","date_gmt":"2019-07-22T10:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/?p=3963"},"modified":"2019-07-22T16:59:52","modified_gmt":"2019-07-22T16:59:52","slug":"chinese-national-space-administration-destructed-tiangong-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/chinese-national-space-administration-destructed-tiangong-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese National Space Administration destructed Tiangong 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Chinese National Space Administration<\/strong> destructed Tiangong 2 space station are at hand, as the eight-ton piece of hardware will fall to earth, or rather sea, some time in the next 20 hours or so in a controlled deorbit maneuver.  But unlike with its predecessor, it isn\u2019t a mystery where this particular piece of space debris is going to fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tiangong-2 is a small space station that was put into orbit in 2016 to test a number of China\u2019s orbital technologies; it was originally planned to stay up there for two years, but as many a well-engineered piece of space kit has done, it greatly exceeded its expected lifespan and has been operational for more than a thousand days now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chinese Taikonauts have visited the station to perform\nexperiments, test tools, perform orbital refueling and all that sort of thing.\nBut it\u2019s not nearly as well equipped as the International Space Station, nor as\nspacious \u2014 and that\u2019s saying something \u2014 so they only stayed a month, and even\nthat must have been pretty grueling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The time has come, however, for Tiangong-2 to be deorbited and, naturally, destroyed in the process. The China National Space Administration indicated that the 18-meter-wide station and solar panels will mostly burn up during reentry, but that a small amount of debris may fall \u201cin a safe area in the South Pacific,\u201d specifying a rather large area that does<\/em> technically include quite a bit of New Zealand (160-190\u00b0W long by 30-45\u00b0S lat).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They did not specify when exactly it would be coming down,\nexcept that it would be during July 19 Beijing time (it\u2019s already morning there\nat the time of publishing). It should produce a visible streak but not anything\nyou\u2019ll see if you aren\u2019t looking for it. This visualization from The Aerospace\nCompany shows how the previous, very similar station would break up:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s much better than Tiangong-1, which stopped responding\nto its operators after several years and as such could not be deliberately\nguided into a safe reentry path. Instead it just slowly drifted down until\npeople were pretty sure it would be reentering sometime in the following few\ndays \u2014 and it did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was never any real danger that the bus-sized station\nwould land on anyone, but it\u2019s just fundamentally a little unnerving not\nknowing where the thing would be coming down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t the last Tiangong; Tiangong-3 is planned for a\n2020 launch, and will further inform the Chinese engineers and astronauts in\ntheir development of a more full-featured space station planned for a couple\nyears down the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Controlled deorbit is the responsible thing to do, not to mention just plain polite, and the CNSA is doing the right thing here. All the same, Kiwis should probably carry umbrellas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About Tiangong-2:<\/strong>
Tiangong-2 was China’s second experimental station<\/strong>. It was planted into the orbit in 2016.<\/strong> The mission aimed at testing China\u2019s orbital technologies<\/strong>. It had completed all of its experiments. 
It was planned for two-year operational life by more than a year. Only one set of astronauts were hosted to the Station in October and November 2016. But several robotic missions has been hosted to the space station.
Tiangong-2  was orbiting Earth 16,209 times <\/strong>and spent more than 1,000 days in space<\/strong>. In April 2018, Tiangong-1<\/strong> was destroyed in an uncontrolled re-entry. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chinese National Space Administration destructed Tiangong 2 space station are at hand, as the eight-ton piece of hardware will fall to earth, or rather sea, some time in the next 20 hours or so in a controlled deorbit maneuver.  But unlike with its predecessor, it isn\u2019t a mystery where this particular piece of space debris […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":3964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[219,58,220],"class_list":["post-3963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-affairs-articles","tag-chinese-national-space-administration","tag-international-current-affairs","tag-tiangong-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3963"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3970,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3963\/revisions\/3970"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}