Space is the new frontier in waste management, it seems. There’s a lot of man-made debris up there. The latest concern is about Tiangong-1, the 18,750-pound Chinese space station that’s breaking up and expected to fall toward the earth’s surface this week.
Dr. Jerry Linenger – former NASA astronaut and author of Off the Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months aboard the Space Station Mir – explains what’s likely to happen.
“It’s a gangly thing, if you think of a space station. You’ve got appendages sticking out. Usually, the solar panels will fly off first. The Tiangong has solar panels. Those will melt off; the aluminum will melt off and break apart. The thing that usually survives will be the fuel tank – spherical balls, basically – and those things are kind of like projectiles coming in and that’s probably the parts that we may see hit the earth, streaking through the sky, if it happens to be night time.”
Dr. Linenger was a guest on McIntyre in the Morning.
By Sandy Wells
KABC News
