Brace yourselves! Chinese space station to soon crash into Earth

A Chinese space station is soon going to crash into Earth within the next few months and no one exactly knows the location where it will crash.

According to reports, Tiangong-1, better known as ‘Heavenly Palace’, is a 9.4 ton space station that is accelerating down towards Earth and it is not yet predictable as to where it will crash. Chunks weighing about 100 kilograms are likely to come crashing down to Earth.

The station was launched back in 2011 and was never intended to be permanent. The Chinese government informed in March 2016 that the station’s time is over but later, they declared in September 2016 that they lost the control of the station and that it was on decaying orbit.

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Back then, the Chinese officials predicted that the station would crash down into Earth sometime between October 2017 and April 2018. However, now Harvard University’s astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell claims that the station is much closer and is expected to hit Earth sooner.

While talking to The Guardian he said, “Now that [its] perigee is below 300 kilometers (186 miles) and it is in denser atmosphere, the rate of decay is getting higher. I expect it will come down a few months from now - late 2017 or early 2018”.

Furthermore, the exact date and place of the crashing is still not known. Minute changes in atmospheric conditions can too alter the crashing site 'from one continent to another'.

According to The Washington Post, McDowell asserted, “You really can’t steer these things. Even a couple of days before it reenters, we probably won’t know better than six or seven hours, plus or minus, when it’s going to come down. Not knowing when it’s going to come down translates as not knowing where it’s going to come down.”