The Buzz | Space lab mostly burns up on re-entry in south Pacific

China’s defunct Tiangong 1 space station mostly burned up on re-entry into the atmosphere yesterday over the central South Pacific, Chinese space authorities said. The experimental space laboratory re-entered around 8:15 a.m. Beijing time, the China Manned Space Engineering Office said.

Scientists monitoring the craft’s disintegrating orbit had forecast the craft would mostly burn up and would pose only the slightest of risks to people. Analysis from the Beijing Aerospace Control Center showed it had mostly burned up.

Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at Australian National University, said that Tiangong 1’s re-entry was “mostly successful” and that it would have been better if the space station had not been spinning toward Earth.

“It could have been better, obviously, if it wasn’t tumbling, but it landed in the Southern Pacific Ocean, and that’s kind of where you hope it would land,” Tucker said.