On Sunday, a Chinese space station called Tiangong-1 is expected to crash to Earth.

The 9.4-ton spacecraft went up into space in 2011, but in 2016, the Chinese government lost communication with it due to an apparent technical malfunction.

It’s difficult to predict exactly when Tiangong-1 will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, and where it will break up into pieces before it lands. On Monday, the space station was at an altitude of about 130 miles. It has been falling more than a mile every day since then, and its rate of descent is also accelerating.

The exact location of the impending Tiangong-1 crash is still a mystery, but it will likely hit somewhere 42.7 degrees north or south of the equator. The chances of Tiangong-1’s re-entry are slightly higher in New Zealand, Tasmania, the northern states of the US, northern China, the Middle East, central Italy, northern Spain, and parts of South America and southern Africa

If you’d like to track Tiangong-1 as it falls, there are several sites you can check:

•The European Space Agency’s Space Debris Office is tracking Tiangong-1’s altitude and continuously updating its prediction for the station’s re-entry time.

•A nonprofit based in California, the Aerospace Corporation, created a page with information on Tiangong-1’s status and when it will likely re-enter Earth’s atmosphere.

•On March 18, China’s space agency, China Manned Space, began publishing daily updates on the space station’s current location and orbit, according to the GB Times.

•SatView provides a map of where Tiangong-1 is at any given moment and the craft’s predicted path.

*Astrophysicists like Dr Marco Langbroek and Quan-Zhi Ye are tweeting updates using the hashtag #Tiangong1, too.

As of Friday at 3 p.m., Tiangong-1 is at an altitude of about 110 miles, with approximately 44 hours to go until it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere on April 1 at 15:15 UTC (give or take 14 hours), according to the Aerospace Corporation.

Aerospace’s map, seen below, shows the station’s approximate location in its orbit (as of Friday afternoon):


Source: http://www.clintgist.com/a-chinese-space-station-is-hurtling-toward-earth-heres-how-to-track-the-crash-as-it-happens-id8188931-html/


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