The second Chinese space station may be about to fall to Earth

China is lowering the trajectory of the Thien Cung 2 station weighing 8.6 tons, raising speculation that the station is about to fall back to Earth.

In addition to Thien Cung 1 station, which fell to the earth at the beginning of the year, China and another space station are operating experiments on orbit Thien Cung 2 station . But authorities are lowering Thien Cung 2's trajectory from about 380 to 290km to bring the station back to Earth, the IFL Science reported yesterday.

Thien Cung 2 station is operating in orbit.(Photo: Satflare).

Jonathan McDowell, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said China is certainly trying to avoid the incident with the Thien Cung 1 station and lowering the trajectory of Thien Cung 2 station on Tuesday. 6."We don't know when the next fall will happen," McDowell said.

The Thien Cung 1 station attracted much attention when it fell back uncontrollably. China lost control of the station in 2016 and no one knows for sure where the grounding station is. Finally, the 8.5-ton space station crashed into the Pacific Ocean on April 2.

Thien Cung 2 station launched into orbit in September 2016 and once picked up the crew of the two who stayed in October - November 2016. After that, no other missions were carried out. China uses Thien Cung 2 to prepare for a plan to set up a larger space station with the first compartment expected to launch in 2020.

The Chinese manned space engineering agency (CMSE) has not yet made an official announcement about lowering the orbit of Thien Cung station. 2. The station is about the same size as Thien Cung 1 station. Large pillars of this size will not burn down when flying through the atmosphere. Most likely it will fall into the sea like Thien Cung 1 station.