Stargazers will need luck to see Chinese space station crash: ESA

Tiangong-1 altitude decay forecast as of 6 March Credit ESA

Tiangong-1 altitude decay forecast as of 6 March Credit ESA

If you've seen stories about the Chinese space station Tiangong-1 uncontrollably falling to Earth sometime this weekend, you may worry the sky is falling. It is not clear when or where it will land. China's chief space laboratory designer Zhu Zongpeng has denied Tiangong was out of control, but hasn't provided specifics on what, if anything, China is doing to guide the craft's re-entry.

Estimates say the Tiangong-1 space craft will enter the Earth's atmosphere on Sunday at 11:33am BST and could unleash a series of fireballs watched by observers.

"The worldwide community doesn't know what the craft is made of, and that makes estimating the danger more challenging, as hardened fuel containers could reach the ground while lightweight panels won't", he said. But it is very unlikely that the Netherlands will be hit, Stijn Lemmens of the European Space Agency (ESA) said to broadcaster NOS. And if it makes you feel better, a piece of space debris almost as heavy as Tiangong-1 fell to Earth earlier this year; no one panicked and no one got hurt.

Aerospace in a statement said that there was "a chance that a small amount of debris" from the module will survive re-entry and hit the Earth.

If you're looking for a map of where Tiangong-1 is at all times on its orbit, SatView is your friend.

The objective of this small space station was to place Chinese astronauts, or "taikonauts", into low orbit to determine how to live in space.

Most famously, America's 77-ton Skylab crashed through the atmosphere in 1979, spreading pieces of wreckage near the southwestern Australia city of Perth, which fined the USA $400 for littering.

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That means you have a much, much better chance of winning a PowerBall Jackpot (1 in 300,000,000 odds) than being hit by chunks off the falling space station. No one on the ground was injured.

In 2011, NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite was considered to pose a slight risk to the public when it came down to Earth 20 years after its launching. It crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2001.

The potential re-entry area for the Chinese satellite. Its last crew departed in 2013 and contact with it was cut in 2016.

Since China conducted its first crewed mission in 2003 _ becoming only the third country after Russian Federation and the U.S.to do so _ it has taken on increasingly ambitious projects, including staging a spacewalk and landing its Jade Rabbit rover on the moon.

The problem with the Tiangong 1 is that it has been out of telemetry control, for a year or more and thus, there is no reliable way to steer the craft to reentry.

China originally thought that Tiangong-1 would reenter Earth's atmosphere in late 2017 but that didn't happen. The country is far outside the impact zone.

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