Chinese space station will soon plummet to Earth

The Tiangong-1 was launched in 2011 as part of an ambitious scientific push to turn China into a space superpower.

Wu Ping, the deputy director of the Chinese manned space engineering office, said the return to earth was unlikely to affect aviation activities or cause damage to the ground, according to China’s official news agency Xinhua. McDowell also said even if an initial site could be pinpointed shortly before the space lab falls, any slight change in atmospheric pressure could substantially change the landing area.

This announcement seemed to be a give away that China had actually lost control of the 10.4m-long module after it suffered some kind of technical or mechanical failure and that they won’t be able to control its descent to Earth.

China’s Tiangong-1 is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on 2017 and it’s not going to land. A senior space official said that the station had comprehensively accomplished its historical mission.

When satellites and space stations such as Skylab, Mir, and the lesser-known Salyut and Almaz complete or fail their missions, they’re frequently de-orbited, that is, nudged into Earth’s atmosphere, where they will meet a fiery demise.

The comments from Wu appear to confirm previously held speculation that China was not in control of the space station’s future. Furthermore the authorities won’t know where exactly the debris will land until six or seven hours before the crash.

China recently launched the Tiangong-2 space lab module. Wu added that China is monitoring the space station for collisions with other orbiting satellites.

Tiangong-2 is placed in an orbit of 393 kilometers above the Earth and it will help in studying fundamental physics, biology, fluid mechanics in microgravity, space science and will monitor Earth from space. That kind of uncontrolled re-entry tends to make headlines: You may remember NASA’s Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite falling to Earth in in 2011 and the European GOCE satellite in 2013. Although much of the space laboratory will disintegrate, astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell believes that the 200-pound pieces could withstand the trauma of re-entry. The space station’s name translates to “Heavenly Palace 1”.