Chinese Space Station Finally Re-Enters Earth's Atmosphere

chinese-space-station-fall-to-earth-via-mlive

After months of confusion, China’s free-falling 8.5-ton space station finally re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere Sunday, April 1 over the South Pacific Ocean.

The U.S. Strategic Command’s Joint Force Space Component Command confirmed that the Tiangong-1 space station re-entered our atmosphere over the South Pacific at 5:16 p.m. Sunday. The Associated Press reports that officials with the Chinese space agency say that most of the 8.5-ton space station burned up on reentry as most expected.

U.S.-funded Aerospace Corporation also confirmed that the space station reentered in the Pacific Ocean.

The confusion surrounding the space station concerned where and when it would burn up as the European Space Agency routinely said “at no time will a precise time/location prediction from ESA be possible.” Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell echoed that statement to The Guardian in a recent report that predicting where any could actually hit Earth’s surface is next to impossible.

While there was an uneasy level of confusion surrounding a free-falling bus-sized space station, Aerospace gave the odds of a chunk hitting a piece of the space station at 1-in-1-trillion.

“The JFSCC used the Space Surveillance Network sensors and their orbital analysis system to confirm Tiangong-1’s reentry, and to refine its prediction and ultimately provide more fidelity as the reentry time approached,” the U.S. Strategic Command said in a news release.

Watch the free-falling 8.5-ton space station as it nears its fiery end

The space station formerly known as the “Heavenly Palace,” originally launched in September 2011 and was viewed as a major step for the space agency in its quest to build a space station by 2020. A.P. reports the last crew left Tiangong-1 back in 2013, and that the Chinese space agency lost contact in 2016.