March 31, 2018
 

By Lora Snow

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This is not an early April Fool’s Day prank. The Chinese space station, Tiangon-1, is expected to crash to earth around April 1. More precisely, The Aerospace Corporation predicts the Chinese space station Tiangong-1 will crash to earth around April 1, 2018 at 2:00 Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) plus or minus seven hours.

 

This translates to 5:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), 4:00 PM Central Daylight Time (CDT), 3:00 PM Mountain Daylight Time (MDT), and 2:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), plus or minus seven hours.

 

The Aerospace Corp says it will fall somewhere between 43° north and 43° south latitude. This includes most of the United States, Central America, South America, China, Africa, southern Europe, and Australia. It also includes vast areas of ocean. It does not include Russia, Canada, and Northern Europe.

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The Aerospace Corp also says the chances that  that an individual has a better chance of winning the Powerball Jackpot than getting hit with a piece of the falling debris.

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Tiangon-1, which means “Heavenly Palace-1” in English, is about the size of a school bus. It was launched into space on September 30, 2011 and has been orbiting the earth from about 220 miles (350 km) above. This is a little lower the International Space Station which orbits the earth from about 250 miles (400 km) above.

 

There’s no one currently aboard the space station. Tiangon-1 was designed to work for two years. Its primary mission was to test the docking and rendezvous technologies China would need for a future space station, which in intends to launch by the early 2020s.

 

This mission was successful. Shenzhou-8, Shenshou-9, and Shenszou-10 successfully docked with the space station, and Shenshou-9, and Shenszou-10 carried three astronauts each and their rendezvous with the space station lasted about two weeks. After the Sgebzhou-10 mission was complete China put Tiangon-1 into “sleep mode.”

 

China had planned to de-orbit Tiangon-1in a controlled fashion by using its thrusters to guide it into earth’s atmosphere. But in March of 2016 they announced that Tiangon-1 had stopped sending data back to them.

 

Another phenomenon in the sky this weekend is a blue moon. This will occur on March 31. The term “blue moon” refers to the second full moon in a calendar month, not the color the moon appears to be. A blue moon only occurs about once every three years.

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