Just like every space station has a specified time period in space and is eventually set to fall back to Earth, so is China’s space station that has completed its time and will fall back today.
China’s space station Tiangong-2 is all set to fall back to Earth on July 19, Friday. After completing its three-year journey in orbit, the prototype space station will burn up its thrusters and slam back to its home planet.
However, as per New Scientist, the good news is that the space station will fall back in an isolated patch of the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and Chile, hence not posing a threat to anyone. Most of the craft will be burned up into nothing as it will re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere.
Some of the fragments will survive, which are being launched towards ‘Point Nemo’ – an isolated patch of the Pacific Ocean dubbed as the ‘spacecraft cemetery’. After reaching there, it will rest alongside numerous other discarded spacecrafts, rockets and satellites, wrote Futurism.
All of the planned research and missions for the space station have been completed. China always planned to decommission the Tiangong-2. After its crashing, China is expected to launch a full-sized and permanent space station in 2020.