Chinese space station finally crashes to Earth

The Chinese out-of-control space station has finally crashed to Earth, though harmlessly, somewhere over the Southern Pacific Ocean.

As per US Strategic Command, the 34ft long spacecraft, Tiangong-1, crashed at around 08:16pm EST (05:15am PKT) on April 1. The descent of the spacecraft finally marked an end of the space station’s seven years in orbit and successfully crashed in an area with no population thus, harming no one.

Though much of the debris burned up on its way to Earth, some of it still managed to make its way down over the Pacific Ocean, though still not clear how much of it. Till the last day the exact location of its crash wasn’t known but, it was clear that it won’t do much harm.

Look out for Chinese space station crashing to Earth tomorrow

As per Chicago Tribune, Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at Australian National University expressed about the crash, “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.”

According to BBC, European Space Agency claimed beforehand that the space station is likely to break up over water, which actually covers most of Earth’s surface. It also said that the chances of anyone getting hit by the debris were ‘10 million times smaller than the yearly chance of being hit by lightning’.

Tiangong-1, better known as ‘Heavenly Palace’ was launched by the Chinese space agency in 2011 and in 2016, the Chinese government declared that they have lost control over it. The space station that had kept people and space agencies worried regarding its crash landing is now officially no more.