Skip to content

Comment on Falling Chinese Space Station to Crash This Weekendparent

Comments

That's probably impossible to do. Slight variations in atmospheric densities even in the last days/weeks leading up to the final reentry can change the final reentry time by 1/6th or more of an orbit. Wired did an article about a small simplistic model check it out. So managing a 'controlled' reentry from 2+ years out is just too complex to be done now, maybe ever it depends on a lot of different variables.

https://www.wired.com/story/you-can-model-chinas-tiangong-1-...

For further example: as of right now ESA still gives a 4 hour window for the reentry which is a really wide swath of the Earth that it could fall onto.

https://twitter.com/esa/status/980492830081679361

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.