Here we are, the Chinese space station Tiangong 1 in a few hours will impact the Earth, or the fragments that will remain after meeting with the layers of the atmosphere. The last few hours have been important to begin to narrow the risk band, between 43 degrees South latitude and 43 degrees North latitude, and in which central-southern Italy continues to be present. For our country, however, experts indicate a minimal risk, also because the steps of the Tiangong have now been reduced from four to two. This is the scenario that emerged from the models developed by the experts of the Institute of Information Science and Technologies' A. Faedo 'of the National Research Council (Cnr) and the Italian Space Agency (Asi), supplied to the Civil Protection Department.
Angelo Borrelli, Head of Civil Protection, in a press release said that the percentage of hitting our territory has fallen to 0,1% and from here to the next hours we will have the possibility to exclude that the Italian territory will be hit.
Models based on data collected from more than 12 space agencies and research institutions around the world indicate that the Tiangong 1 space station could re-enter the atmosphere before returning to 'greet' Italy in the last two steps still possible: the first around the 4.50 south of Sicily and the other around 6.30 about Sardinia and central-southern Italy. The area of āāthe return may be indicated with certainty only with an advance of 40 minutes, but since the morning the calculations have allowed to exclude some areas: first Central and North America, then a large part of Australia, then New Zealand; in the afternoon, South-East Africa, India and Indochina were also outside the area at risk. This progressive exclusion will continue in the next few hours, more and more rapidly and precisely, while the Tiangong 1 will continue to decline until it reaches the crucial share, that of about 80 kilometers, which is expected to take place. The long history of 2016 began in March, when China declared that it had lost contact with its first space station, the 'celestial palace' that was supposed to end its operational life in the 2013 and that instead ended up out of control, in free fall towards the Earth.