As reported by China.org, China has successfully maneuvered their Tiangong-2 space lab into the spacecraft’s designated orbit at 383 km above the Earth and next month’s docking with the Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft seems to be on schedule.
Advertisement
In April 2017, China plans to sent a space cargo ship Tianzhou-1 to deliver supplies to the space laboratory. This indicates some level of uncertainty about where the space lab will fall, as The Washington Post points out.
Speculation that China had lost control of Tiangong-1 spread in June after Thomas Dorman, an amateur satellite tracker who had been observing the station, told Space.com that he thinks “China will wait until the last minute to let the world know it has a problem with their space station”.
Soon after, rumors surfaced that China no longer had control of the spacecraft.
Based on our calculation and analysis, most parts of the space lab will burn up during falling, she told China’s state-run Xinhua news agency.
Wu added that China is monitoring the space station for collisions with other objects.
Most of the 8.5-ton station is expected to melt as it passes through the atmosphere, but McDowell said some parts, such as the engines, were so dense they might not burn up completely.
The space station was launched in September 2011 and taken out of service this past March.
Its replacement, Tiangong-2, was launched on Thursday, and is due to receive its first manned mission from Shenzhou-11 in mid-to-late October.
Advertisement
Over the course of its five-year lifespan, Tiangong-1 conducted observations of various natural phenomena on Earth, including Australian bush fires and the Yuyao floods in the eastern Zhejiang province. The payloads of Tiangong-2 incorporate POLAR, a joint effort between Swiss, Polish and Chinese organizations which is meant to study gamma ray bursts, and a cold nuclear space clock, which is reported to lose only one second in around 30 million years.
