Spain lands Chinese space station in Pacific 'without incident'

The 10-metre-long, 8.5-tonne space station, put into orbit in September 2011, was visited by six astronauts during two Chinese space missions in 2012 and 2013 and carried out investigation work before being abandoned in 2016.

Since then, it has been floating in orbit out of control, and the European Space Agency (ESA) was one of several expert bodies who feared it would hit the Earth.

Calculations showed that although it would mostly break up into microscopic pieces due to the heat produced by the friction of its re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, about 40% of the Tiangong 1 would land on the planet.

It was expected to come down in southern Europe, with Spain, Italy and Greece being the main targets.

But previous abandoned space stations had been brought back to Earth without incident – the Skylab, launched by the USA and weighing 80 tonnes, was repatriated in 1979 and, more recently, the Russian Mir, weighing 140 tonnes disintegrated when it passed through the sky-space boundary in 2001.

China launched a new space laboratory, the Tiangong 2, in September 2016 and, over the next two months, it played host to its first manned mission with two astronauts.

The Tiangong 1, which translates as 'celestial palace', crumbled into the South Pacific at 02.15 mainland Spain time today (Easter Monday), according to Chinese space agency Xinhua.

Spain had announced just before Easter that it would be coordinating the Tiangong 1's return from its space centre in Torrejón de Ardoz on behalf of the ESA and the European Union.