Chinese Space Station Burns Up Over South Pacific

The Associated Press reports:

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

Launched in 2011, Tiangong 1 was China’s first space station, serving as an experimental platform for bigger projects, such as the Tiangong 2 launched in September 2016 and a future permanent Chinese space station.

Two crews of Chinese astronauts lived on the station while testing docking procedures and other operations. Its last crew departed in 2013 and contact with it was cut in 2016.