Carring a HIGHLY TOXIC CHEMICAL
An unmanned Chinese space station is set to crash to Earth soon.
The latest predictions put the timeframe somewhere in March.
The fragments that make it to Earth may be carrying a toxic chemical known as hydrazine, and it's unclear if there's any real reason to worry.
Tiangong-1 has been making headlines since the China National Space Administration lost contact with it in 2016. Since then, researchers have monitored the decay of its orbit, zeroing in on ever-narrowing windows of when—and where—the space station will burn through Earth’s atmosphere. When it does, the spacecraft could leave chunks of debris that will make it to Earth’s surface.
Recent headlines have suggested that the presence of hydrazine, a chemical sometimes used as a propellant, aboard Tiangong-1, is a cause for concern. A statement put out by Aerospace, a space research organization, lays out the situation: “Potentially, there may be a highly toxic and corrosive substance called hydrazine on board the spacecraft that could survive re-entry.”
However, as Tim Flohrer, a researcher with the European Space Agency, told Newsweek, it’s unclear whether there’s any real cause for worry.
How much of the chemical, and whether it would actually survive upon re-entry, is an open question, Flohrer said. “There is no clear answer to this in general for re-entering objects.” He explains that the concern about hydrazine depends at least on the amount present before re-entry, the design and overall mass of the spacecraft, and the re-entry angle. The only person who knows how much hydrazine is present on Tiangong-1 or the relevant information about its design is the operator of the spacecraft.
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