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Crashing space station is no April Fool's joke

Here's why Tampa Bay has as good a chance as anyone of getting hit - or not.
Credit: AFP
Tiangong-1 is expected to crash on Earth on Sunday.

TAMPA, Fla. -- It’s nothing you really need to be worried about, but as long as a space station the size of a house will likely come crashing back to Earth sometime in the next few days, why not – right?

“Obviously, it could land anywhere,” said Jose Cotayo.

When it comes to space junk, Cotayo is the resident space junkie at Tampa’s Museum of Science and Industry. So, who better to ask whether we need to be worried about the Chinese Tiangong-1 Space Station? And what will happen when the 8-ton satellite likely to plummets back to Earth this weekend.

“We’re not going to have an 'Armageddon' situation where you have this giant clump that just disperses into smaller clumps and it targets cities and it crushes buildings and you have the bell tower that tips over,” said Cotaya, referring to the 1998 asteroid movie.

Thank goodness.

Still, it’s no April Fool’s joke that Tiangong-1 - which translates to “heavenly space” - is out of control after China lost contact with the space station a couple of years ago. And that it will likely fall back to Earth around April 1 between latitudes 43 north and 43 degrees south.

“Which actually comprises not just a lot of the US, but a lot of the other major cities of the world,” said Cotayo,”So, like you said it’s human nature to be like ‘Oh my God are we safe, what’s going on?’”

The space station, which is visible now using radar, will likely break into little pieces and start burning up in the atmosphere. At that point, if it’s over land it would become far more visible to the human eye.

“We do expect to see fragments of it and depending upon the time of day, or night, when it happens it’s going to look really spectacular, like giant fireballs coming down,” said Cotayo.

Some might wonder why we don’t pull an "Armageddon" and just blow Tiangong to pieces before it falls to Earth.

Well, since we don’t know exactly what influences heat and gravity are already having on the space station, it might be hard to hit, says Cotayo. And even if you did, that might just create a dangerous bunch of orbiting debris.

“It could pose a threat to other orbiting satellites, and even possibly the International Space Station and anything that’s in Earth’s orbit,” said Cotayo.

The odds of you getting struck by Tiangong-1 are seriously astronomical. About 1 in 300 trillion.

That means you’re 130 million times more likely to get hit by lightning.

When a much bigger, heavier satellite - Skylab - fell back to Earth in 1979, some parts actually survived the re-entry. Even then, no one was hurt.

“So, do we have something to be worried about? Realistically, I would say probably not,” said Cotayo.

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