China’s Tiangong-1 space station has crashed in the Pacific Ocean, according to the country’s space agency, The Guardian reports.
The spacecraft re-entered the earth’s atmosphere at 0015 GMT on Monday over the South Pacific and mostly burnt up on re-entry, state news agency Xinhua said
The US military appeared to confirm the re-entry with a statement from its Joint Force Space Component Command (JFSCC).
The 10.4-metre-long (34.1-foot) Tiangong-1, or Heavenly Palace 1, was launched in 2011 to carry out docking and orbit experiments as part of China’s ambitious space programme, which aims to place a permanent station in orbit by 2023.
It was originally planned to be decommissioned in 2013 but its mission was repeatedly extended. Eventually, in 2016, it had become apparent to space-watchers that the craft had stopped functioning and was no longer responding to ground control.
In December 2017, China eventually made a statement to the UN predicting that Tiangong-1 would come down by late March 2018.