China Again On News
China is again on the news. 2020–2030 might be their year to fill the media and horrify people. This time also we can’t do much. A part of the rocket revolved around us and kissed the Indian ocean taking away the fear of catastrophe.
There is only one space station currently in orbit, The International Space Station. Due to tensions between China and America, They won’t cooperate so china doesn’t have access to the ISS. As the ISS is expected to be decommissioned in 2024 there is a plot for another space station that China is aiming for. By 2022, through 11 missions they are trying to build their own space station called Tiangong. The space station will be joined in space like the ISS had been made. Tiangong will be having 1/5th of the mass of the ISS and the size of the decommissioned Russian space station Mir.
The first mission carrying the core of the space station called Tianhe(“Harmony of Heaven”) was launched on 29 April 2021 via their launch vehicle long march 5B. Tianhe is the part where the humans reside and other parts are connected to it. The long march 5b is about 53.7m in length. It has a payload of 22 tonnes and a core of 30-meter section.
China has a unique way of disposing of the first stage of the rocket. Usually, the first stage is burned and is drowned in the ocean, this method is followed by India, USA. Space X lands their first stage after detachment which leads to reusable rocket boosters thus is the most cost-efficient way yet. China sends the first stage higher than usual and it orbits the earth before it's destroyed or drowned in any ocean by controlled re-entry. What panicked everyone is that they lost control of it.
The mission was successful, Tianhe reached the desired orbit but the first stage had orbited the earth with an inclination of 41 degrees and at height around 150–200km. Thankfully on 9 May 2021 the rocket crash-landed in the Indian Ocean near the Maldives, just 1054 km from the INDIAN state Kerala. This might be a large distance for us but viewing from space a small inclination could have led to a great catastrophe.
This is not the first time china made this mistake. Last year in a mission involving the same launch vehicle, the first stage crash-landed on the ivory coast. Tiangong-1 was another space station that was built by china launched on 29 September 2011. They decommissioned the space station in 2016 but they lost control of it and in 2018 it crash-landed in the pacific ocean.
Tiangong 2 was destroyed by control re-entry it was launched in 2018. Not only china lost control of its space crafts. Skylab, the USA’s first space station also lost control and crash-landed.
There is a lot of space debris like this including old satellites and parts of the rocket. These are drowned near Point Nemo in the pacific ocean. You can know more about it here.
China has been emerging in this area since the 2000s. Chian has landed rovers on parts where rovers haven't been landed. China has also sent satellites to mars. China is building the Tiangong in cooperation with the United Nations. One of the problems that china face is that they don't have launch pads near the coastline as there are other densely populated countries nearby. So, they launch from places having less population. So, if they lose control of the ship it could cost lives and property.
Most countries also have an anti-satellite missile system to destroy potential threats.
China with the help of the knowledge by maintaining Tiangong-1 and 2 is set to build their space station. We have to wait till 2022 to know whether they will deem success or not.
https://medium.com/illuminations-mirror/humans-conquering-mars-the-first-flight-a17b3f2777ce
