(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, its name translating 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 about 8:15 a.m. 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 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.
Skylab re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on July 11, 1979, and parts of it fell 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.
Image copyright FRAUNHOFER Image caption China's space lab Tiangong-1 was tracked on radar
China's defunct Tiangong-1 space lab mostly broke up on re-entering the Earth's atmosphere above the South Pacific, Chinese and US reports say.
It re-entered the atmosphere around 00:15 GMT on Monday, China's Manned Space Engineering Office said.
Tiangong-1 was launched in 2011 to carry out docking and orbit experiments.
It was part of China's efforts to build a manned space station by 2022, but stopped working in March 2016.
What do we know about where it came down?
The rather vague "above the South Pacific" is the line from space officials.
US specialists at the Joint Force Space Component Command said they had used orbit analysis technology to confirm Tiangong-1's re-entry.
Astronomer Jonathan McDowell, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tweeted that it appeared to have come down north-west of Tahiti.
Experts had struggled to predict exactly where the lab would make its re-entry - and China's space agency wrongly suggested it would be off Sao Paulo, Brazil, shortly before the moment came.
The European Space Agency said in advance that Tiangong-1 would probably break up over water, which covers much of the Earth's surface.
It stressed that the chances of anyone being hit by debris from the module were "10 million times smaller than the yearly chance of being hit by lightning".
It's not clear how much of the debris reached the Earth's surface intact.
Why did the space lab fall like this?
Ideally, the 10m (32ft)-long Tiangong module would have been taken out of orbit in a planned manner.
Traditionally, thrusters are fired on large vehicles to drive them towards a remote zone over the Southern Ocean. This option appears not to have been available after the loss of command links.
Thirteen space agencies, under the leadership of the European Space Agency, used radar and optical observations to follow Tiangong's path around the globe.
Tiangong means 'Heavenly Palace'
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Astronaut Wang Yaping memorably gave a lecture to school children from Tiangong-1
The module was launched in 2011 to practise rendezvous and docking
Two astronaut crews visited in Shenzhou capsules - in 2012 and 2013
They included China's first female astronauts Liu Yang and Wang Yaping
China plans a more permanent space station in the next decade
It has developed a heavy-lift rocket, Long March 5, for the purpose
Is this the biggest space hardware to fall out of the sky?
Tiangong was certainly on the large size for uncontrolled re-entry objects, but it was far from being the biggest, historically:
The US space agency's Skylab was almost 80 tonnes in mass when it came back partially uncontrolled in 1979. Parts struck Western Australia but no-one on the ground was injured
Nasa's Columbia shuttle would also have to be classed as an uncontrolled re-entry. Its mass was more than 100 tonnes when it made its tragic return from orbit in 2003. Again, no-one on the ground was hit as debris scattered through the US states of Texas and Louisiana
Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell believes Tiangong is only the 50th most massive object to come back uncontrolled.
China has launched a second lab, Tiangong-2, which continues to be operational. It was visited by a re-fuelling freighter, Tianzhou-1, just last year.
China's future permanent space station is expected to comprise a large core module and two smaller ancillary modules, and will be in service early in the next decade, the Asian nation says.
A new rocket, the Long March 5, was recently introduced to perform the heavy lifting that will be required to get the core module in orbit.
- Saat Tiangong-1 kembali ke atmosfer Bumi dan jatuh di wilayah Samudera Pasifik bagian selatan, Senin pagi ini (2/4/2018), China menyampaikan salam perpisahan kepada laboratorium eksperimental antariksa miliknya itu.Tiangong-1 sendiri merupakan stasiun luar angkasa pertama buatan China yang diluncurkan pada 29 September 2011. China menilai bahwa Tiangong-1 adalah pelopor stasiun luar angkasa masa depan bagi Negeri Tirai Bambu.Wahana antariksa ini beroperasi selama kurang lebih empat tahun setengah mengorbit di ketinggian 350 kilometer dari permukaan Bumi.Selain itu, Tiangong-1 ini memberikan kontribusi penting terhadap asal-muasal misi berawak China, sehingga membuka jalan untuk menjadi negara ketiga yang membangun permanen stasiun luar angkasa pada 2022.Huang Weifen, Deputy Chief Designer of the Astronout Center of China, mengatakan peran penting Tiangong-1 terukir dalam sejarah antariksa China."Itu telah membantu kami mengumpulkan pengalaman berharga dalam membangun stasiun luar angkasa," sebutnya seperti dikutipdari Xinhua, Senin (2/4/2018).
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"Meskipun Tiangong-1 hanyalah sebuah platform transisi antara pesawat antariksa dengan stasiun luar angkasa,itu adalah kunci bagi China untuk memperoleh teknologi docking pesawat antariksa. Dan, itu menunjukkan kemungkinan tempat tinggal lama untuk orang China," tutur Bai Ruixue, mantan jurnalis dan CEO di perusahaan yang fokus tentang antariksa.Bai menuturkan bahwa ketika melaporkan proses docking antara Shenzou-8 dan Tiangong-1 di Beijing Aerospace Control Center pada November 2011, banyak orang yang meneteskan air mata ketika dua wahana antariksa tersebut."Seperti dua butir debu yang mengambang di alam semesta yang luas, terhubung satu sama lain merupakan kisah cinta yang ekstrem, yang diciptakan oleh sains dan teknologi," kata Bai.Diketahui, pertama kali diluncurkan pada 29 September 2011, stasiun luar angkasa pertama Negeri Tirai Bambu tersebut mengorbit di ketinggian 350 kilometer.Ketika itu, Tiangong-1 merupakan muatan dari Long March 2F yang diluncurkan di Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China.Stasiun luar angkasa berbentuk tabung dengan panjang 10,4 meter berdiameter 3,4 meter dan dilengkapi bentengan panel surya di kedua sisinya ini, pernah ditempati para penjelajah antariksa dari China.Namun sejak 2016, Tiangong-1 sudah tidak dapat dikontrol lagi dan mulai turun orbitnya. Stasiun luar angkasa China itu berpotensi jatuh ke Bumi di wilayah pada rentang 43 derajat lintang utara sampai 43 derajat lintang selatan, termasuk Indonesia di dalamnya.
