BEIJING: An abandoned Chinese space laboratory is set to meet a fiery end within hours as it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere, hitting a speed of around 26,000 kilometres an hour before disintegrating. The ESA added, however, that the space lab will likely break up over water, which covers most of the planet’s surface. In contrast, Russia brought down its massive Mir space station through a controlled re-entry over the Pacific Ocean in 2001. A Chinese spaceflight engineer denied earlier this year that the lab was out of control. China sent another space lab, Tiangong-2, into orbit in September 2016 as a stepping stone to its goal of having a crewed space station by 2022.

Source: New Strait Times April 01, 2018 23:26 UTC