The Shenzhou 12 prelaunch press conference explicitly addressed the question of large upper stage reentries. The spokesperson said: "the last stage falls into the atmosphere for destruction" (true) " and this is current international practice" (false for stages of CZ5B size)
They note that upper stages are passivated to prevent them exploding later [good], and that the cargo ship will be deorbited under control [good].
They claim that the upper stages on reentry will ablate and break up (true) and that little will reach the ground, with the probability of causing harm being extremely low ['extremely' is false for the CZ-5B].
So I don't entirely agree with their analysis, but I am glad they explicitly addressed it, shows they have at least heard the criticism.

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More from @planet4589

17 Jun
I thought I'd give my own spin on Abbie's black hole tweet (although you should read her own discussion of it and follow her at @abigailStev ) .... Image
@abigailStev What is 4U 1543-47? It's a 'high mass X-ray
binary', a binary star with an A-type main sequence star called IL Lupi, about twice as massive as the Sun, tightly orbiting a black hole 9 times the mass of the Sun.
@abigailStev The two objects are so close to each other that matter from the
A star is being torn off and collects in a disk
around the black hole, slowly trickling in.
Read 13 tweets
17 Jun
The Shenzhou-12/CZ-2F Stage 2 combo is flying through space building up speed towards orbital velocity
Main engine shutdown; vernier engine burn; then waiting for stage 2 separation from spacecraft
Spacecraft has separated from the upper stage - waiting for solar panel deployment Image
Read 6 tweets
17 Jun
Crew of Shenzhou 12: Maj-Gen Nie Haisheng, Maj-Gen Liu Boming and Col. Tang Honbo. (Recall that Chinese names have the surname before the personal name, so Gen. Nie, Gen. Liu and Col. Tang for short)
Ascent continues. Escape tower will jettison at T+2min Image
Escape tower jettison! Next, side booster separation
Read 5 tweets
16 Jun
Pesquet is now at the IROSA FSE. IROSA is the ISS Roll Out Solar Array, the new solar panels for the station. FSE (Flight Support Equipment) means "the thing that the IROSA is attached to/packaged in for delivery".
The IROSA FSE is attached to the POA (Payload ORU Accommodation), i.e. "fixture where you can temporarily stash big things"
The POA is actually a spare 'hand' like the ones on the end of the Canadarm robot arm. It is on the MBS (Mobile Base System), a.k.a. "truck that goes back and forth along the railway on the ISS truss".
Read 4 tweets
16 Jun
Recent Starlink launches are using plane-drift to share sats from a launch among even more orbit planes. This also increases the amount of time sats spend in orbit raising. Here is the launch from Feb 4, with 23% of sats still not at final altitude after over 4 months Image
So hey @merrdiff not just 'a few weeks' :-)
The result is that 30% of all working Starlinks are currently in orbit raise and only 66% in or close to the operational orbit. This is a lot higher fraction in orbit raise than we expected, with implications for astronomical impacts
Read 5 tweets
11 Jun
In the night sky, most of you probably know the constellation of Ursa Major ("the Great Bear", "the Plough", "the Big Dipper"). The tail of the bear, or handle of the plough/dipper, ends in an arc of stars: Alioth, Mizar and Alkaid [Photo: A. Fujii via SkyandTelescope]
Amateur astronomers soon learn to find the bright northern stars Arcturus and Spica with the rhyme: 'Arc on to Arcturus, Speed on to Spica' (diagram via EarthSky.org)
(Hang on, I am notorious for my long tweet streams. This one is going to be a ride.)
Read 32 tweets

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