Space station China will crash into earth in the next few months

News24xx.com -  China’s Tinagong-1 space station, previously orbiting of Earth, is slowly fallout towards the planet’s surface, but the scientists have no idea where it’s going to end up.

China had told the UN in 2016 that they’d lost control of the space station, unable to maintain its altitude, and that they expected it to plummet to the ground between October 2017 and April 2018.

However, Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell now tells the Guardian that the space lab is entering our atmosphere faster than anticipated, and should hit Earth in the early parts of that time frame

“Now its below 300 kilometers, and it is in denser atmosphere, the rate of decay is getting higher,” McDowell said.

“I expect it will come down a few months from now—late 2017 or early 2018.” Most of the space station should ideally burn up in the atmosphere by the time it reaches us.

However, McDowell believes there will be smaller chunks, each weighing up to 100kg, that will remain intact and hit the planet’s surface at extreme velocity.

The worst part here is that scientists will have barely any warning of where and when Tiangong-1 will come down, though they believe it’s unlikely to happen in a densely populated area.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to steer the station, so where it crashes can’t be certain.

“Even a couple of days before it re-enters we probably won’t know better than six or seven hours, plus or minus, when it’s going to come down,” McDowell said.

“Not knowing when it’s going to come down translates as not knowing where it’s going to come down.”