Chinese space station crashes to Earth over the South Pacific

Catherine Garcia, The Week US's avatar
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Last updated
A Long March 2F rocket carrying the country's first space laboratory module Tiangong-1 lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on September 29, 2011.
(Image credit: Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

China's defunct Tiangong-1 space station re-entered the atmosphere and landed in the South Pacific at around 8:16 p.m. ET on Sunday, the country's Manned Space Agency announced.

Most of the 40-foot-long lab burned up upon re-entry. Tiangong-1, which means "Heavenly Palace," was launched in September 2011, as a prototype for a permanent space station China wants to launch by 2022. The European Space Agency had warned that debris from Tiangong-1 could fall over the United States, anywhere from Oregon to Connecticut.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.