Spain to lead return of space station 'Tiangong 1'

The Tiangong 1 has been floating dormant in orbit, unused, since 2016 and Spain's space monitoring centre at the military base in Torrejón de Ardoz (Greater Madrid region) will work with the CDTI on bringing it down.

Although the planned date for the space station to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere is this Sunday, April 1, a margin for error of around 20 hours has been allowed to ensure the operation is as accurate as possible.

According to head of Space and Technology Returns for the CDTI, Jorge Lomba, the Tiangong 1 has been gradually losing height and, until it is only around 120 kilometres up, it is not possible to predict the time and place of its landing to any precise degree.

Torrejón de Ardoz will use data gathered by five radars in Germany, Spain, France and Italy and three laser stations in Spain, Italy and the UK, as well as the two giant telescopes based in Spain and Italy.

China's space programme said a few days ago that the Tiangong 1 would burn up completely once it made contact with the Earth's atmosphere, meaning none of its remains will hit the ground, although the EU calculates that around 60% of it will disintegrate before it enters terrestrial sky, due to the friction caused by the more dense layers of the atmosphere.

The remaining 40% - about three tonnes of waste, which would include engines, fuel tanks and parts of the primary structure – may well survive the re-entry.

These parts would fall in small fragments and land spread out along a stretch of about 1,000 kilometres long and a few hundred kilometres wide – about double the length of the UK – at a latitude of between 40º north and 40º south, most of which is sea, but which could include Spain and elsewhere in southern Europe.

“Although it's a bit early to rule out small fragments reaching Spain, the probability of their falling in a residential area is very small,” Lomba assures.

“In any case, if there was any danger to the population, the proper protection measures would be taken.”

The Spanish space monitoring centre is reporting in real time to the Civil Protection squad across Europe of the progress the Tiangong 1 is making in its descent.

Measuring 10.5 by 17 metres (about 34'6” by 55'3”) - or about the size of a pádel tennis court – and weighing 8.5 tonnes, the Tiangong 1 was sent up into orbit on September 29, 2011. and was China's first space station and a 'pilot' ahead of possibly setting up a permanent version.

Its name translates as 'Celestial Palace 1' and, for several months, it has been orbiting out of control, which various space agencies have expressed their fears about.

The European Space Agency (ESA) was one of the first to warn about the Tiangong 1's possibly impacting the earth if it fell, and marked various parts of southern Europe, including Spain, Italy and Greece, as likely landing points.

But the Tiangong 1 is not the largest space station to be 'repatriated' – the record at the moment is held by the NASA Skylab, weighing 74 tonnes, which left fragments of its shell in the Australian city of Esperance back in 1979.