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- Tiangong-2, a Chinese space station has burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere as part of a planned deorbit. The space station’s planned deorbit was executed by putting it into a controlled descent into the atmosphere, where it broke up into small pieces.
- It was launched in 2016 as a space lab for testing space technologies. The space station weighed 8 tons thus making it very small by space station standards.
- Tiangong-2 was the successor to Tiangong-1, which was launched in 2011. Tiangong-1 had an unplanned deorbit in 2018.
- China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) has announced that Tiangong-2 is planned to be replaced by a new Chinese space station called Tianhe, which will be able to host three astronauts for long durations, around 2022.
- A space station is a habitable artificial satellite. It is capable of hosting crew members for an extended period of time, and provides facilities for experiments and support vehicles to dock.
- Currently, there is only one fully functional space station in the Earth’s lower orbit, the International Space Station. The ISS is a partnership between European Union (European Space Agency), the United States (NASA), Japan (JAXA), Canada (CSA) and Russia (Roscosmos).
