Falling back to Earth

Tiangong-1 disintegrates before crashing into a watery grave

Chinese space lab Tiangong-1 disintegrates in the atmosphere before crashing into a watery grave.

BEIJING: A defunct Chinese space lab disintegrated under intense heat as it hurtled through Earth’s atmosphere and plunged to a watery grave in the South Pacific, Chinese officials said.

The Tiangong-1 “mostly” burnt up above the vast ocean’s central region at 8.15am Beijing time, China’s Manned Space Engineering Office said.

There was no immediate confirmation of the final resting place of any remaining debris.

“Most of the parts burnt up and disappeared,” foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters, adding that China kept the United Nations space agency informed about the situation.

“According to my knowledge, we have not found any harm to the Earth’s surface.”

Tiangong-1 – or “Heavenly Palace” – was placed in orbit in September 2011, acting as a testing ground for China’s efforts to build its own space station by 2022, but ceased functioning in 2016.

Space officials had promised the atmospheric disintegration of the 10.4m-long craft would offer a “splendid” show akin to a meteor shower. But the remote location likely deprived stargazers of the spectacle.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said the module zoomed over Pyongyang and Kyoto during daylight hours, reducing the odds of glimpsing it before it hit the Pacific.

“It would have been fun for people to see it but there will be other re-entries,” McDowell said. “The good thing is that it doesn’t cause any damage when it comes down.”

Space officials had warned that knowing the exact location of the re-entry would not be possible until shortly before it happened.

The difficulties seemed to wrongfoot Chinese space scientists – just moments before announcing that the craft would come down over the Pacific, they had said it would make its re-entry over Sao Paulo and head towards the Atlantic Ocean.

The US military’s network of radars and sensors also confirmed that the Tiangong-1 had re-entered over the Pacific, but a minute later than the Chinese estimate, according to a statement by the Joint Force Space Component Command. — AFP