China’s Space Station, Tiangiong-1, Crashes Into Earth On April 1st.

0
573
This radar image from the Fraunhofer Institute shows the shape of China's falling space station Tiangong-1 Credit: AP

This is not April fool, the Chinese out-of-control Space Station has finally fire-balled into the Earth’s atmosphere. Chinese Space authorities announced on their website that the space lab re-entered the earth’s atmosphere at Southern Pacific Ocean, off the coast of South America, 8:15 a.m. Monday, Chinese local time. This was about 5:15 p.m. Pacific time on Sunday.

This is confirmed by the U.S. Strategic Command’s Joint Force Space Component Command. It has also been confirmed by various space agencies in Australia, Japan, France, Canada and Germany.

The Tiangiong-1, which means “Heavenly Palace”, was launched in 2011 as a space lab, and had a capacity for 2 astronauts. It hosted astronauts twice, in 2012 and 2013 in its lifetime.

On re-entry into the Earth, most of its mass was burnt, and the left-over debris splashed into the Pacific Ocean causing no harm to human life. That was a close one considering it was moving at a speed of 17,000 miles per hour:  according to its trajectory map, a change in the pressure of its orbiting environment would have brought it into South America itself or Africa through the west coast.