Splashdown near Tahiti

SHANGHAI: China’s Tiangong1 space station reentered Earth’s atmosphere and burnt up over the South Pacific yesterday, the Chinese space authority said.

The ‘‘vast majority’’ of the craft burnt up on reentry, around 1.15pm (NZ time), the authority said in a brief statement on its website, without saying exactly where any pieces might have landed.

Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at Australian National University, said the remnants of Tiangong1 appeared to have landed about 100km northwest of Tahiti.

‘‘Small bits definitely will have made it to the surface,’’ he said. Even though most of the station would have burnt up in the atmosphere, the 10% that made it to the ground still amounted to 700kg to 800kg.

‘‘Most likely the debris is in the ocean, and even if people stumbled over it, it would just look like rubbish in the ocean and be spread over a huge area of thousands of square kilometres.’’

China said on Saturday it was unlikely any large pieces would reach the ground.

The 10.4mlong Tiangong1, or ‘‘Heavenly Palace 1’’, was launched in 2011 to carry out docking and orbit experiments as part of China’s ambitious space programme, which aims to place a permanent station in orbit by 2023.

Decommissioning was originally planned for 2013 but the mission was repeatedly extended.