Three Chinese taikonauts — Wang Jie, Chen Zhongrui and Chen Dong — will be extending their stay aboard China's Tiangong space station after their return capsule was struck by a presumed piece of orbital debris on Wednesday.

Three Chinese taikonauts — Wang Jie, Chen Zhongrui and Chen Dong — will be extending their stay aboard China’s Tiangong space station after their return capsule was struck by a presumed piece of orbital debris on Wednesday.

  • az04@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    6 hours ago

    China creates more orbital debris than every other country combined, so they had this coming. If we’re going to experience Kessler syndrome, it’ll be because of them.

    • redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      54 minutes ago

      Good. Starlink, spy satellites, golden domes and dreams of rods from gods or nukes in space. Humanity can be grounded for a few decades.

    • Ziggurat@jlai.luEnglish
      15·
      8 hours ago

      For the plane, they concluded it was a weather balloon, the company owning the balloon has made a statement in which they confirm that they lost a balloon at a time/location compatible with the incident, and will fully cooperate with investigator and also support new regulations to make sure it won’t happen again.

    • FaceDeer@fedia.io
      491·
      14 hours ago

      The funny thing is that we have been doing a lot about it lately, most launch providers these days take care to ensure that their spent boosters reenter and satellite operators include provisions for moving them to graveyard orbits when they’re done.

      Except China, who have continued to be rather sloppy when it comes to disposing of their boosters. Maybe this will give them a nudge.