By my calculations, Tiangong-1 will be the 50th most massive uncontrolled reentry from Earth orbit in history.
(CNN) It was a fiery end to what was once one of China's highest profile space projects.
The Tiangong-1 space lab re-entered Earth's atmosphere Monday morning, landing in the middle of the South Pacific, China Manned Space Agency said.
"Most parts were burned up in the re-entry process," it added.
The space lab, whose name translates to "Heavenly Palace" , was launched in September 2011 as a prototype for China's ultimate space goal: a permanent space station is expected to launch around 2022.
Its demise, though ultimately uneventful, captured public attention in recent weeks, as scientists around the world tracked its uncontrolled descent.
"It did exactly what it was expected to do; the predictions, at least the past 24 hours' ones, were spot on; and as expected it fell somewhere empty and did no damage," said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
McDowell said there was unlikely to be any amateur images of the vessel's re-entry given it was daytime in the Pacific when it crashed to Earth. Scientists had earlier said it might be possible to see the spacecraft burn up in a "series of fireballs streaking across the sky."
It landed around 8.15 a.m. Monday Beijing time (8:15 p.m. ET Sunday), China's Manned Space Agency said.
Leroy Chiao, a former US astronaut who flew on four space missions, told CNN he would be "surprised if any major pieces survived the re-entry, as the Tiangong-1 was not that big of a spacecraft as they go, and it did not have a heat shield."
Anything that did make it through the atmosphere "will be at the bottom of the ocean by now," he added.
The Tiangong-1 was last used by astronauts in 2013, when a three-strong team spent 12 days on the vessel conducting experiments.
Female astronaut Wang Yaping delivered a lecture from space lab to students back on Earth. During its lifespan it successfully docked with three spacecraft.
The Chinese government told the United Nations in May 2017 it had "ceased functioning" in March 2016, without saying exactly why.
The uncontrolled re-entry of the space lab has been a blot on China's space program , as it goes against international best practice.
Chiao said the original plan was to guide the space station down in a controlled manner, "much like the Mir space station was."
"There's a specific location in the ocean known as the spacecraft graveyard where nations try and put down into," he said.
The space lab's fate it hasn't delayed China's bold plans. In September 2016, China launched its second space lab, Tiangong-2
Both vessels are part of the preparation for a permanent Chinese presence in space, which is likely to come into operation just as funding for the International Space Station is expected to end.
China said last week training is underway for astronauts who will use the space station, state news agency Xinhua reported. It said it plans to assemble it in space in 2020 and will become fully operational in 2022.
China also plans to put a man on the moon and send a rover to Mars.
The 82 tonne Skylab space station re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on 11th July 1979 and parts of it hit the Earth in Western Australia.
While it's not uncommon for debris such as satellites or spent rocket stages to fall to Earth, large vessels capable of supporting human life are rarer.
The first US space station, the 74-ton Skylab, fell to Earth in an uncontrolled reentry in 1979. Some debris fell in sparsely populated Western Australia, causing no problems except for a $400 fine for littering.
Out-of-control Chinese space station Tiangong-1 is set to smash through the Earth's atmosphere over the long Easter weekend — and Australia is in its path.
CHINA’S defunct Tiangong-1 space station has finally crashed after re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, as stargazers tried to get a glimpse of it.
China’s Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) has confirmed the space station has re-entered atmosphere and mostly burned up.
It has landed in the South Pacific after it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere at 10.16am AEST.
Only about 10 per cent of the bus-sized, 8.5-tonne spacecraft will likely survive being burned up on re-entry, mainly its heavier components such as its engines.
The US Strategic Command’s Joint Force Space Component Command (JFSCC) issued a statement saying that its re-entry was confirmed theough coordination with counterparts in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the UK.
The station has landed north-west of Tahiti.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics stated: “North-west of Tahiti - it managed to miss the ‘spacecraft graveyard’ which is further south!”
The Chinese space office had said shortly before that it was expected to re-enter off the Brazilian coast in the South Atlantic near the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
NW of Tahiti - it managed to miss the 'spacecraft graveyard' which is further south! pic.twitter.com/Sj4e42O7Dc — Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) April 2, 2018
Based on the space station’s orbit, it could have come back to Earth somewhere 43 degrees north and 43 degrees south, a range covering most of the United States, China, Africa, southern Europe, Australia and South America.
The eight-tonne craft was unlikely to cause any damage when crashed, but its fiery disintegration will offer a “splendid” show akin to a meteor shower, Chinese authorities said.
Scientists said falling debris poses only a slight risk to people on the ground. The chances of any one person being hit by debris were considered less than one in a trillion.
Dr Zhu Jin, director of Beijing Planetarium, said the chances of anyone being hit by a piece of falling debris were lower than those of winning the lottery.
“The high speeds of returning satellites mean they can travel thousands of kilometres during that time window, and that makes it very hard to predict a precise location of reentry,” said Holger Krag, head of the ESA’s Space Debris Office, in comments posted on the agency’s website.
The ESA added, however, that the space lab would likely break up over water, which covers most of the planet’s surface.
There is “no need for people to worry”, the China Manned Space Engineering Office said earlier on its WeChat social media account.
Such falling spacecraft do “not crash into the Earth fiercely like in sci-fi movies, but turn into a splendid (meteor shower) and move across the beautiful starry sky as they race towards the Earth”, it said.
Launched in 2011, Tiangong 1 was China’s first space station, serving as an experimental platform for bigger projects, such as the Tiangong 2 launched in September 2016 and a future permanent Chinese space station. 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.
The module — which was used to practise complicated manual and automatic docking techniques — was originally intended to be used for just two years, but ended up serving considerably longer.
During its brief lifespan, it hosted Chinese astronauts on several occasions as they performed experiments and even taught a class that was broadcast into schools across the country.
Since then, it has orbited gradually closer and closer to Earth on its own while being monitored.
Many Western space experts think China has lost control of the station. China’s chief space laboratory designer, Zhu Zongpeng, has denied Tiangong was out of control, but hasn’t provided specifics on what, if anything, China was doing to guide the craft’s return to Earth.
Tiangong-1 had been slated for a controlled re-entry, but ceased functioning in March 2016. Space enthusiasts have been bracing for its return ever since.
The ESA has said that ground controllers were no longer able to command Tiangong-1 to fire its on-board engines, which could have been used to control where it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere.
In contrast, Russia brought down its massive Mir space station through a controlled re-entry over the Pacific Ocean in 2001.
A Chinese spaceflight engineer denied earlier this year that the lab was out of control.
Chinese media have downplayed comments by the ESA and others that the country’s engineers have lost control of the lab, with reports saying that the idea it is “out of control” is an invention of foreign media.
But on Chinese social media, commenters criticised the government’s reluctance to own up to the situation.
“Can you or can’t you report that you’ve lost control of the situation?” one person wrote on the Twitter-like Weibo.
“It’s not unusual that something this complicated would have a mishap.”
Beijing began its manned spaceflight programme in 1990 after buying Russian technology that enabled it to become the third country with the ability to launch humans into space, following the former Soviet Union and the United States.
China sent another space lab, Tiangong-2, into orbit in September 2016 as a stepping stone to its goal of having a crewed space station by 2022.
It also plans to send a manned mission to the moon in the future.
Officials say the space station, which had been out of control since 2016, mostly burnt up on re-entry
China’s Tiangong-1 space station has crashed in the Pacific Ocean, according to the country’s space agency.
The spacecraft re-entered the earth’s atmosphere at 0015 GMT on Monday over the South Pacific and mostly burnt up, state news agency Xinhua said.
Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) NW of Tahiti - it managed to miss the 'spacecraft graveyard' which is further south! pic.twitter.com/Sj4e42O7Dc
The US military’s Joint Force Space Component Command (JFSCC) said it confirmed re-entry “through coordination with counterparts in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom”.
18 SPCS (@18SPCS) UPDATE: #JFSCC confirmed #Tiangong1 reentered the atmosphere over the southern Pacific Ocean at ~5:16 p.m. (PST) April 1. For details see https://t.co/OzZXgaEX0W @US_Stratcom @usairforce @AFSpaceCC @30thSpaceWing @PeteAFB @SpaceTrackOrg pic.twitter.com/KVljDALqzi
The China Manned Space Engineering Office said: “Through monitoring and analysis by Beijing Aerospace Control Centre and related agencies, Tiangong 1 re-entered the atmosphere at about 8.15am, 2 April, Beijing time (1.15am GMT). The re-entry falling area is located in the central region of the South Pacific.
“Most of the devices were ablated during the re-entry process.” Ablated, in spacecraft terms, means burned up through atmospheric friction.
China’s foreign and defence ministries said the country had relayed information about Tiangong-1’s return to earth to the United Nations space agency and others.
Play Video 0:34 Watch the 2011 launch of crashed Chinese space station Tiangong-1 – video
The 10.4-metre long (34.1-foot) Tiangong-1, 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.
Tiangong-1 crash: everything you need to know Read more
The European Space Agency had indicated earlier that Tiangong-1 was likely to break up over water, which covers most of the planet’s surface.
It described the probability of someone being hit by a piece of debris from Tiangong-1 as “10 million times smaller than the yearly chance of being hit by lightning”.
It was originally planned to be decommissioned in 2013 but its mission was repeatedly extended. Eventually, in 2016, it had become apparent to space-watchers that the craft had stopped functioning and was no longer responding to ground control.
In December 2017, China eventually made a statement to the UN predicting that Tiangong-1 would come down by late March 2018.
Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at Australian National University, said Tiangong-1’s re-entry was “mostly successful” though it would have been better if the space station had not been spinning toward Earth. “It could have been better obviously, if it wasn’t tumbling, but it landed in the southern Pacific Ocean and that’s kind of where you hope it would land,” Tucker said.
“It’s been tumbling and spinning for a while, which means that when it really starts to come down it’s less predictable about what happens to it,” Tucker said.
“The biggest takeaway from this is that as we put more things into space, all countries, we have to be aware that we do have to plan for these sorts of issues that are happening.”
On the Chinese microblog Weibo, internet users posted under the hashtag “Goodbye Tiangong” as the spacecraft’s met its fate. Some were dismissive of the Chinese space agency’s characterisations. “Re-entry? Everyone knows it’s a crash.” Another wrote: “Goodbye Tiangong-1. You are our hero.”
The Chinese tabloid Global Times said on Monday that worldwide media hype about the re-entry reflected overseas “envy” of China’s space industry.
“It’s normal for spacecraft to re-enter the atmosphere, yet Tiangong-1 received so much attention partly because some western countries are trying to hype and sling mud at China’s fast-growing aerospace industry,” it said.
Within a year after Tiangong had stopped working, China launched a second space lab, Tiangong-2, whose aim is to test capabilities for long-term human presence in space, in anticipation of a permanent space station to be launched in 2023.
The paper said this may leave China as the only country keeping people in orbit if the International Space Station is retired in 2024. In that case “China will take a dominant position in conducting space experiments”, said Jiao Weixin, a space science professor at Peking University.
Reuters, AFP and PA contributed to this report
