(China Daily via Reuters)Tiangong 1, China’s first space laboratory, will come to a fiery end in late 2017. Chinese officials appeared to admit during a Sept. 14 news conference in Jiuquan that they had lost control of the station. “Based on our calculation and analysis, most parts of the space lab will burn up during falling,” Wu Ping, a director at China’s space engineering office, said during the conference. Wu added that China is monitoring the space station for collisions with other objects. (Strangely, as the rocket carrying the station blasted into space five years ago, China’s state-run TV station played “America the Beautiful.”) It served as China’s base of space experiments for roughly 4½ years, two years longer than originally anticipated.

Source: Washington Post September 21, 2016 11:18 UTC