Heavenly Palace Falls to Earth

In the year 2011 China had launched a space station into orbit around the Earth. Called Tiangong-1 or ‘Heavenly Palace’, the space station has been in a steadily decaying orbit since March 2016. The 8.5 tonne space station is currently about 216 miles above the Earth and headed towards the planet for a fiery end.

As per Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist from Harvard University, now that the altitude is getting lower the space station will decay at a much faster rate. He expects the space station to come down in a few months time, which could be late 2017 or early 2018.

While the majority of the space station will be torn into chunks which will burn up upon reentry into the environment of the planet, there will still be a number of large pieces weighing up to 100 kg that will slam into the Earth. The Chinese government is closely monitoring the descent of the Heavenly Palace, but is unable to predict exactly where the impact will be made.

Chinese’s CNSA space agency said that the probability of endangering and causing damage to aviation and ground activities is very low. This is one science project that is going up in flames, and even it’s inventors have no idea how it’s all going to end.