China’s space ambitions have taken a further step down a path blazed by the US decades ago, after revelations that its first space laboratory is likely to fall to earth next year.
In a press conference at Jiuquan, the desert launch site for China’s space rockets, Wu Ping, a director at China’s space engineering office, said the Tiangong-1 would most likely burn up on descent, confirming suspicions that the lab was no longer in a controlled orbit. The eight-tonne lab was launched in 2011 and decommissioned earlier this year.
The possibility of an uncontrolled descent is reminiscent of the 1979 re-entry of Skylab, Nasa’s first space laboratory, that generated a storm of media attention in the weeks before it crashed to earth.
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