TEHRAN, April 02 - China’s Tiangong-1 space station re-entered the earth’s atmosphere and burnt up over the middle of the South Pacific on Monday, the Chinese space authority said.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC)- China’s Tiangong-1 space station re-entered the earth’s atmosphere and burnt up over the middle of the South Pacific on Monday, the Chinese space authority said.
The “vast majority” of the craft burnt up on re-entry, at around 8:15 a.m. (0015 GMT), the authority said in a brief statement on its website, without saying exactly where the remnants might have landed.
Earlier, it had said the craft was expected to re-enter the atmosphere off the Brazilian coast in the South Atlantic near the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
The United States Air Force 18th Space Control Squadron, which tracks and detects all artificial objects in Earth’s orbit, said it had also tracked the Tiangong-1 in its re-entry over the South Pacific.
It said in a statement it had confirmed re-entry in coordination with counterparts in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Britain.
The remnants of Tiangong-1 appeared to have landed about 100 km (62 miles) northwest of Tahiti, said Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at Australian National University.
“Small bits definitely will have made it to the surface,” he told Reuters, adding that while about 90 percent would have burnt up in the atmosphere and just 10 percent made it to the ground, that fraction still amounted to 700 kg (1,543 lb) to 800 kg (1,764 lb).
Source:Reuters
Your Comment