The Tiangong

What fell from space recently?
Accident or retaliation?
Q

Link1
https://www.scientificamerican.com/…/chinese-space-station…/

Link2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L5tYESX97M

Link3
https://www.cnn.com/…/tiangong-1-china-space-lab…/index.html

It was a fiery end to what was once one of China's highest-profile space projects.

The Tiangong-1 space lab re-entered Earth's atmosphere Monday morning, landing in the middle of the South Pacific, China Manned Space Agency said.

"Most parts were burned up in the re-entry process," it added.

The space lab, its name translating to "Heavenly Palace," was launched in September 2011 as a prototype for China's ultimate space goal: a permanent space station is expected to launch around 2022.

Its demise, though ultimately uneventful, captured public attention in recent weeks, as scientists around the world tracked its uncontrolled descent.

Link4
Chinas First space Station:
https://www.space.com/27320-tiangong-1.html
MORE
Tiangong-1 is a single-module space station operated by the China National Space Administration. The module was launched in 2011 and hosted two crews of taikonauts (Chinese astronauts) in 2012 and 2013. Since China's space agency discloses less information about its missions than other space agencies, the details surrounding the space station are not widely known.

Link5

Tiangong-1, or Heavenly Palace 1, was a symbol of China’s rise when it launched in 2011 and key part of the country’s ambitious space programme, which aims to place a permanent station in orbit by 2023.

https://www.theguardian.com/…/tiangong-1-crash-china-space-…

Link6
https://www.sciencealert.com/spacecraft-graveyard-point-nem…

The most remote location on Earth has many names: It's called Point Nemo (Latin for 'no one') and the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility. Most precisely, its exact coordinates are 48 degrees 52.6 minutes south latitude and 123 degrees 23.6 minutes west longitude.
The spot is about 2,250 km (1,400 miles) from any spot of land - and the perfect place to dump dead or dying spacecraft, which is why it's home to what NASA calls its "spacecraft cemetery."

"It's in the Pacific Ocean and is pretty much the farthest place from any human civilisation you can find," NASA said.

Bill Ailor, an aerospace engineer and atmospheric reentry specialist, put it another way: "It's a great place you can put things down without hitting anything," he said.

To "bury" something in the cemetery, space agencies have to time a crash over that spot. Smaller satellites don't generally end up at Point Nemo, since, as NASA explains, "the heat from the friction of the air burns up the satellite as it falls toward Earth at thousands of miles per hour. Ta-da! No more satellite."

The problem is larger objects, like Tiangong-1: the first Chinese space station, which launched in September 2011 and weighs about 8.5 tons.

China lost control of the 12-metre-long orbital laboratory in March 2016, and it is now doomed to crash by 2 April 2018. When it does, hundreds of pounds of the spacecraft - like titanium scaffolding and glass-fibre-wrapped fuel tanks - could be falling at more than 180 miles per hour before slamming into the ground.

Since China doesn't have control of Tiangong-1, it can't assure the space station will disintegrate over Point Nemo.
The dead-spacecraft dumping zone

Astronauts living aboard the International Space Station actually live closer to the graveyard of spacecraft than anyone else.

This is because the ISS orbits about 360km above Earth - and Point Nemo, when the orbital laboratory flies overhead. (The nearest island, meanwhile, is much farther away.)

Between 1971 and mid-2016, space agencies all over the world dumped at least 260 spacecraft into the region, according to Popular Science. That tally has risen significantly since the year 2015, when the total was just 161, per Gizmodo.

Buried under more than two miles of water is the Soviet-era MIR space station, more than 140 Russian resupply vehicles, several of the European Space Agency's cargo ships (like the Jules Verne ATV), and even a SpaceX rocket, according to Smithsonian.com.

These dead spacecraft aren't neatly tucked together, though.

Ailor said a large object like Tiangong-1 can break apart into an oval-shaped footprint of debris that extends 1600 km (995 miles) long and dozens of miles wide.

Meanwhile, the land-free zone around Point Nemo stretches more than 17 million square km - so paying your respects to a specific item isn't easy.

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https://www.space.com/40168-china-space-station-tiangong-1-crash-tracking.html