The Guardian/Jonathan McDowell: Tiangong-1 crash: Chinese space station comes down in Pacific Ocean

The Guardian

China
Tiangong-1 crash: Chinese space station comes down in Pacific Ocean

Officials say the space station, which had been out of control since 2016, mostly burnt up on re-entry

Guardian staff and agencies

Mon 2 Apr 2018 07.35 BST
First published on Mon 2 Apr 2018 02.17 BST

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Monitor image of the fall to Earth of China’s out-of-control space lab Tiangong 1 being tracked by Korea’s space science institute.
Monitor image of the fall to Earth of China’s out-of-control space lab Tiangong 1 being tracked by Korea’s space science institute. Photograph: YONHAP/EPA

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
    April 2, 2018

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
    April 2, 2018

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.
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
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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.”
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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
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