Why did the Chinese put the Tiangong-2 so high?

Asked Aug 19 '18 at 09:56

Active Aug 20 '18 at 09:45

Viewed 301 times

The most obvious answer is that they don’t want to deorbit the station shortly, but why?
Some calculations with the TLEs and SGP4 show the following Tiangong-2 / ISS close encounters:

2018-07-13 09:11:01.384   Dmin= 25.93 km, Vrel= 6.02 km/s
2018-07-30 15:34:39.470   Dmin= 23.16 km, Vrel= 7.30 km/s
2018-08-16 08:06:30.046   Dmin= 31.63 km, Vrel= 8.46 km/s

Since the TLEs age is just a few hours, a reasonable accuracy on Dmin should be better than +/- 2 km.
Does the Tingong-2 have some optical/radar capabilities to observe the ISS?
I’m asking because I’m trying to understand whether the Chinese might be interested in close encounters with the ISS.

edited Aug 20 '18 at 09:45

asked Aug 19 '18 at 09:56

Cristiano

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Interesting question! Hmm... let's see, have there ever been other cases of the Chinese government or military spying in the news? Also, slightly related: Is 45 km unusually close to pass the ISS and deploy a microsatellite without warning? – uhoh Aug 20 '18 at 00:30
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Also slightly related: ISS - Tiangong 2 minimum safe distance. – Cristiano Aug 20 '18 at 10:25
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Not sure about the title... if it's in an orbit similar to ISS, then it's definitely not 'so high'; 400km of ISS is a rather low orbit with a significant atmospheric drag. – SF. Aug 20 '18 at 12:16
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I'm referring to the fact that after the big deboost of about 88 km, they did an even bigger reboost (97 km). Would you suggest a better title? – Cristiano Aug 20 '18 at 12:46

Why did the Chinese put the Tiangong-2 so high?

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