Satellite watchers are counting down. A 23-ton Chinese Long March rocket has been circling (ellipsing, actually) down and should re-enter the atmosphere any time now. Here’s a list of sites and people to follow who will be following the rocket’s trajectory.
The orbit has been erratic as it dips toward the atmosphere, so its exact entry and ultimate end can’t be predicted. It passed over Australia a few minutes ago, or should have if it didn’t disintegrate into the sea before that.
It will most likely fall into the sea, since that’s 70% of the earth’s surface. WordPress won’t let embed a tracker, but here’s Jonathan McDowell’s latest tweet. He makes a practice of tracking space junk.
Open thread!
KrackenJack
Landfall is an ambiguous choice of words in this situation…
Ken
Obligatory.
Tom Levenson
I’m wearing a cap. I’m sure that will protect me.
Cheryl Rofer
@Tom Levenson: I hope it’s tinfoil-lined
Mary G
If it could just get to Florida and land on a certain golf course, with SS agents able to run to safety…
Ken
My God, the comments on that YouTube tracker. Or maybe I shouldn’t invoke God – of the ones I could read, a horribly large proportion seem to be asking God to drop the rocket on <insert country here>.
Chetan Murthy
@Ken: I remember when Skylab came down. I was a high school freshman, visiting India with my family. I remember reading in the newspapers of many, many peasants praying for it to come down on their house, so the US government would pay them compensation. In the end, it came down in the Australian outback.
Robert Sneddon
@Chetan Murthy:
There’s a number of one-kangaroo towns in Australia with a museum-shack displaying bits of the Skylab space station that were found locally after the Great Skyfall. It resulted in a widespread footprint of parts and impacts after it disintegrated high up.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
I don’t think they’d have needed to worry about being compensated by the US government if a large space station reentering the atmosphere slammed into their home. Or about much of anything else ever again lol. Assuming they were home at the tim
ETA: then again, it didn’t come down in one piece if IIRC, so maybe not
Honus
@Chetan Murthy: I was working putting a roof on house when skylab came down. We all wore hard hats when we back up on the roof after lunch.
Steeplejack
@Robert Sneddon:
“One-kangaroo towns.” ? Good one!
dmsilev
From the map in this Tweet,
looks like Mexico central Florida have some risk of being hit by the thing, but most likely scenario is harmlessly hitting the Pacific.
opiejeanne
@Chetan Murthy: The very young son of some church friends of my parents was absolutely terrified that Skylab would fall on his house.
I was trying to remember if it was the kid who grew up to be an astronaut, but no. That kid was 19 when Skylab fell, but that would have made a great story.
CaseyL
One of the linked stories noted that the rocket will break apart on re-entry and fall in pieces, but didn’t say how big the pieces were likely to be – or how widespread.
Skylab was three times the weight (~90 tons vs. 23), so I don’t expect there to be much of a show. I realize “not much of a show” is very relative – if even a tiny 500-lb piece falls on someone, it will be their last show ever.
Robert Sneddon
@CaseyL: Skylab had things like a lead-lined safe to keep camera film in and various other structural parts which were big and dense like the airlocks. Some of the other bits that made it to ground in recognisable pieces were pressurised gas tanks and the like. They didn’t hit the ground that hard, maybe 200kph or a bit more.
The Long March 5B core stage is a cryogenic fuelled booster (LOX/LH2), mostly large thin-walled tanks, plumbing and support structures, built light to save weight. The big dense lumps that will hit the ground/water hard at speed will be the engines if they separate from the main structures.
Cameron
Can’t they just shoot this sucker down with one of those Jewish space lasers?
Fair Economist
Passed over Jordan at 2:11 UTC (17 minutes prior to this post).
Another Scott
Yet another tracker site:
It’s now 0233 UTC, so about 23-24 hours or so to go. (Unless I’ve made a mistake!)
[eta:] Which of course I did. It’s 5/9/2021 0238 UTC now…
Cheers,
Scott.
Cheryl Rofer
Cheryl Rofer
Fair Economist
@Another Scott: It’s already the 9th UTC time so that prediction missed.
Reports aren’t going to be good for the Australian flyover because it’s day there – hard to see the rocket.
dmsilev
@Another Scott: Looks like most of the models have an uncertainty of an hour or two. Which is to say, roughly one full orbit.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: It’s probably already gone down in the sea somewhere.
Another Scott
@Fair Economist: Yeah, I got the day wrong. Thanks.
They have +/-1 hour error bars, so they still have about 30 minutes to be “right”.
Given all the unknowns, it’s amazing they can be that close, really.
Cheers,
Scott.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin: Quite possibly, and apparently Wellington was socked in leaving no observations possible until Mexico, so most likely we’ll never see anything else.
JR
@Ken: … and I’m learning Chinese, says Werner Von Braun
Another Scott
Cheers,
Scott.
Cheryl Rofer
Ken
This whole thread is reminding me of a similar watch…
Another Scott
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott: Heh.
Cheryl Rofer
Cheryl Rofer
Sister Golden Bear
Obligatory:
hoosierspud
This story reminds me of John Belushi’s report on Skylab on SNL: https://youtu.be/4Q4JfaHjAng
Another Scott
Speaking of “… must come down…”
https://www.coindesk.com/price/dogecoin
rofl.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“ref – a certain egomaniac hosting SNL, and talking it up recently.”)
NotMax
Of course it comes down on the Sabbath, when the Jewish Space Lasers are turned off.
Another Scott
Cheers,
Scott.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Space Balls Command has this in the palm of their hands
LiminalOwl (formerly The Fat White Duchess)
@Chetan Murthy: I was a college freshman, with my first full-time job that summer at a newspaper. The reporters had a pool going as to where and when Skylab would land; I think they even printed up T-shirts. (And yeah, now I’m thinking about privilege…)