Russian space debris fears shut down Shanghai airport

Via China Digital Times, Shanghai Daily reports that fears about debris from a destroyed Russian Mars probe forced the temporary shutdown of two Shanghai airports last month:  SOME 17 flights were told to defer landing at Shanghai’s two airports late last month out of fear that debris from Russia’s failed Mars probe might fall to ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

Via China Digital Times, Shanghai Daily reports that fears about debris from a destroyed Russian Mars probe forced the temporary shutdown of two Shanghai airports last month: 

Via China Digital Times, Shanghai Daily reports that fears about debris from a destroyed Russian Mars probe forced the temporary shutdown of two Shanghai airports last month: 

SOME 17 flights were told to defer landing at Shanghai’s two airports late last month out of fear that debris from Russia’s failed Mars probe might fall to the city, the civil aviation regulator of East China said yesterday.

The regulators asked the planes to circle around Pudong and Hongqiao international airports about 1am on January 16 after being informed that some pieces of the probe might be dropping to the city, said the East China Regional Administration under Civil Aviation Administration of China.

The Phobos-Grunt Mars probe crashed into the South Pacific about 1,250 kilometers west of Chile, though some reports suggested debris may have allen over a wider area, including parts of Brazilian territory. Russia’s space agency blamed a computer malfunction caused by cosmic rays.

Der Spiegel also recently reported that a 20-year-old German research satellite narrowly missed hitting Beijing last October — though "narrowly" seems like a somewhat relative term when you’re talking about distances of over 2,000 miles. NASA’s 12,500-pound UARS crashed over the Pacific in September. 

Thankfully, due to either navigation technology or probabilities, satellites generally crash at sea, though landfalls aren’t unheard of — such as SkyLab’s 1979 crash in the town of Esperance in Western Australia. It seems like only a matter of time before this results in a major international incident. 

 

 

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

Tag: Space

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