A Giant Space Lab Is Hurtling Toward Earth

I hate to interrupt what I hope is a lovely Easter Sunday afternoon, but we have some news: There’s a giant Chinese space lab hurtling toward Earth. A little background–

Tiangong-1 was launched by China in 2011 and hosted two successful exercises with Chinese astronauts. The nation lost contact with the craft five years later and notified the United Nations that Tiangong-1 was destined for an uncontrolled re-entry to the atmosphere.

Tiangong-1 is expected to grace us with its presence within the next 24 hours or so.

“With the latest available orbital data and space weather forecasts, the re-entry prediction window stabilized and shrunk further to a time frame running from the night of 1 April to the early morning of 2 April,” reported the European Space Agency, which has been tracking the craft and providing public reports for weeks.

“Reentry will take place anywhere between 43 degrees North and 43 degrees South,” the organization said — which places this event in a wide range of the planet above and below the equator, including highly populated urban areas in the U.S.

“Areas above or below these latitudes can be excluded. At no time will a precise time/location prediction from ESA be possible,” the agency said.

Here’s a look at the possible landing zones. It’s, uh, pretty broad.

As scary as this sounds, the Aerospace Corporation says there’s a “one-in-a-trillion chance” that the bus size debris will actually hit a person or– you know– land on your house. Plus, this kind of thing has happened before.

“When considering the worst-case location, the probability that a specific person will be struck by Tiangong-1 debris is about one million times smaller than the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot,” Aerospace Corporation told the Sun. “In the history of spaceflight, no known person has ever been harmed by re-entering space debris.”

WHEW.

In the unlikely event that this massive chunk of space trash lands near your place, don’t touch it. It’s probably toxic, emitting “noxious fumes” and whatnot.

h/t Washington Times