Science

Obsolete Chinese space lab set to re-enter earth's atmosphere

April 03, 2018 00:52·
This is an artist's impression of the Tiangong 1 space station bursting into a series of fireballs at it re-enters the earth's atmosphere

This is an artist's impression of the Tiangong 1 space station bursting into a series of fireballs at it re-enters the earth's atmosphere

Hitting speeds of over 26,000km an hour before disintegrating, the Tiangong-1 is expected to make an uncontrolled earthbound plunge on Monday Beijing time, China's Manned Space Agency said on Sunday - an estimate roughly in line with European Space Agency projections.

What will happen and how great is the danger?

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China will step up efforts to coordinate with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs as the re-entry nears, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters on Friday.

The Tiangong-1 had previously docked with Shenzhou-8, Shenzhou-9 and Shenzhou-10 spacecraft.

Under the right conditions, scientists can gather sensitive information from spacecraft debris, such as what materials were used in its construction, which would point to a country's progress on space research. "Most of the devices were ablated during the re-entry process". No one on the ground was injured.

China's own space program raised major concerns after it used a missile to destroy an out-of-service Chinese satellite in 2007, creating a large and potentially unsafe cloud of debris.

Tiangong-1 was not such an asset, he said.

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ESA, which has a department specialising in space debris, recalled that at first the space ship's controlled re-entry into Earth's atmosphere was planned once its useful life was over, but Tiangong-1, which was launched in 2011, stopped functioning in March 2016.

The station played host to two crewed missions and served as a test platform for perfecting docking procedures and other operations. Its last crew departed in 2013 and contact with it was cut in 2016.

Since then, it has orbited gradually closer and closer to Earth on its own while being monitored.

The station had two modules, one for its solar panels and engines, and one for a pair of astronauts to live in and conduct experiments.

How advanced is China's space program?

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China plans to finalise its space station to rival Mir, the Russian space station now in orbit by 2022. The completed 60-ton station is set to come into full service in 2022 and operate for at least a decade. The massive 420-tonne International Space Station is also expected to crash down at Point Nemo in 2024.

The Paris-based agency, which is managing the global campaign to follow the laboratory's fall, said on Saturday that the time and place of its re-entry continues to be a "highly variable" prediction affected by the changing solar activity, reports Efe news. It plans to send a manned mission to the moon in the future.

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