Rymdstation störtar mot jorden: ”Hoppas den brinner”

Tiangong-1 (Chinese: 天宫一号; pinyin: Tiāngōng yīhào; literally: "Heavenly Palace 1") is China's first prototype space station, serving as both a manned laboratory and an experimental testbed to demonstrate orbital rendezvous and docking capabilities. Launched unmanned aboard a Long March 2F/G rocket on 29 September 2011, it is the first operational component of the Tiangong program, which aims to place a larger, modular station into orbit by 2023. As of September 2011, Tiangong-1 was projected to be deorbited in 2013, and replaced over the following decade by the larger Tiangong-2 and Tiangong-3 modules. Tiangong-1 was visited by a series of Shenzhou spacecraft during its two-year operational lifetime. The first of these, the unmanned Shenzhou 8, successfully docked with the module in November 2011, while the manned Shenzhou 9 mission docked in June 2012. A third and final mission to Tiangong-1, the manned Shenzhou 10, docked in June 2013. The manned missions to Tiangong-1 were notable for including China's first female astronauts, Liu Yang and Wang Yaping. On 21 March 2016, after two years of extended lifespan, the Space Engineering Office announced that Tiangong-1 had officially ended its service. The laboratory will re-enter and burn up in the atmosphere in 2017 after the Chinese Space Agency revealed they had potentially lost control of the craft.