Causing much anxiety, China's first space lab Tiangong-1 will be falling back to Earth in the second half of 2017. Currently, the "Heavenly Palace" is orbiting at an altitude of 370 kilometers (230 miles).
China's official confirmation about the falling space lab came from Wu Ping, deputy director of the manned space engineering office of China.
She said the space lab has ended the six years data service in March and "comprehensively fulfilled its historical mission." The official sought to put any concerns to rest by saying that most parts of the space lab will be burned up, and has ruled out any major threat to aviation or ground activities.
Some reports say that China had lost control of Tiangong-1. Thomas Dorman, an amateur satellite tracker noted that China will wait until the last moment to tell the world that it has a problem with the space station.
The Chinese space agency officials have now admitted telemetry loss happened with the space station and that led to the loss of control over the space lab's orbit.
This means re-entry through Earth's atmosphere will be unbridled and chances of Tiangong-1 hitting down as a bunch of molten metal will be low. Normally the unburned debris has to fall in the ocean as two-third of the Earth's surface is covered by water.
However, such "take it easy" counsel was challenged by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He said the risk of the denser parts of the space station hitting Earth still exists.
"There will be lumps of about [220 pounds] or so, still enough to give you a nasty wallop if it hit you," he said.
Issue Of Managing Space Debris
Now that the 8-ton Chinese space station will certainly crash into Earth, experts have started to raise questions about mechanisms related to the management of space debris.
After announcing the fall of Tiangong-1, China launched its second space lab Tiangong-2 on Sept. 15. This has put the onus on China to explain how the "no control situation" happened with the first space lab and what safeguards are there with the second one.
In 1979, the predicted fall of NASA's Skylab created a lot of panic with no clue on where the ship was going to crash. Fortunately, Skylab landed harmlessly in the Australian outback.
According to experts, Russia has a commendable record in space debris management. It disposed of Mir with effective firings of the onboard rocket engine and safely brought down the remains to the South Pacific.
NASA is expected to act in the same way for the ISS when its life ends in the next 10 years.
