- A Chinese space station called Tiangong-1, or “Heavenly Palace,” is about to crash to Earth.
- The 9.4-ton spacecraft is expected to fall from the sky Sunday morning, break up, and sprinkle debris over Earth’s surface.
- Objects as large as Tiangong-1 can tumble and “skip” off the atmosphere, experts say.
- That and other factors make advanced predictions of a reentry date, time, and location nearly impossible.
- But pieces of Tiangong-1 are extremely unlikely to hit people.
The first space station China ever launched is about to return to Earth as a mess of ultra-hot, supersonic space junk.
China launched Tiangong-1, or “Heavenly Palace,” in 2011. After six successful missions to Tiangong-1 — three of which were crewed — China abandoned the spacecraft in June 2013.See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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See Also:
- China’s bus-size space station is about 80 hours away from crashing to Earth
- A space junk disaster is a real possibility, and surprisingly little is stopping a major loss of human access to space
- Elon Musk has published a new study about his ambitious plans to colonize Mars with SpaceX
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