Despite Western media's scare stories, space lab was unlikely to hit anyone

On Monday, China's first space lab Tiangong-1 re-entered Earth's atmosphere over the South Pacific. Beijing News comments:

Prior to its re-entry, overseas media outlets scare-mongered using words and phrases such as "risk", "danger" and "out of control" when describing Tiangong-1's descent, saying it would crash on land, in a populated area, causing heavy casualties.

Now their sensation-seeking and biased reports have been shown up for what they were, as according to official reports from Western and Chinese space agencies, most of Tiangong-1 burned up when entering the atmosphere and only a few remains fell into the ocean.

There were no casualties, no accidents, and nothing to worry about. Having served almost five years in the space, two and a half years longer than originally designed, Tiangong-1 bid farewell to the world amid some harmless fireworks.

Actually, anyone with the most basic scientific knowledge would have known how ridiculous the rumors being promoted by certain overseas media outlets were. Tiangong-1 had ceased data service on March 16, 2016, but that's far from "out of control". It had still been traveling in a safe orbit for two full years, it was just the re-entry which could not be conducted in a controlled way. Of course, when a big, heavy spacecraft descends, there is always some danger. That's why controlled re-entries into a pre-designated area are preferred. When the Russian space station Mir ended service in March 2001, it fell in a controlled way.

But do not forget Mir weighed 120 tons and Tiangong-1 weighed only 8.5 tons, which means the latter had a much smaller chance of causing damage than the former as it was more likely to burn up on re-entry.

Even under these conditions, China has shown a strong sense of responsibility during the falling of Tiangong-1. Since March 21, 2017, China has been releasing its orbit information once a week. Since March 14 this year, the news updates were issued daily.

Thanks to all these efforts, Tiangong-1 left the world safely. Farewell, Tiangong-1.