Mar 30, 2018
China’s defunct space lab, Tiangong-1, should fall to Earth over the weekend.
At over 10m in length and weighing more than 8 tonnes, it is larger than most of the man-made objects that routinely re-enter Earth’s atmosphere.
China has lost all communication with the module and so the descent will be uncontrolled.
However, experts say there is very low risk that any parts of Tiangong that do not burn up will hit a populated area.
“Given Tiangong-1 has a larger mass and is more robust, as it is pressurised, than many other space objects that return uncontrolled to Earth from space, it is the subject of a number of radar tracking campaigns,” explained Richard Crowther, the UK Space Agency’s chief engineer.
“The majority of the module can be expected to burn up during re-entry heating, with the greatest probability being that any surviving fragments will fall into the sea,” he told BBC News.
