China’s out-of-control space station plummeted back to Earth on Monday, burning up in the atmosphere somewhere over the South Pacific Ocean.

Its final resting place and remains are still a mystery. The China Manned Space Engineering Office said that most of the 34ft-long, 11ft-wide space station's components were "ablated" during re-entry.

With accommodation for two astronauts, China's first space station blasted into orbit aboard a Long March rocket in 2011.

The last crew left in 2013 and Tiangong 1 - translated as Celestial Palace 1 - reached the end of its operational life in 2016, gradually getting closer to Earth ever since.

The station was considered to be a “potent political symbol” of Chinese ambition when launched in 2011, but ends its life an expensive piece of space junk whose ultimate fate has captured the world’s attention.

A symbol of China’s space superpower ambitions

Tiangong-1, or the “Heavenly Palace”, was launched aboard a Long March 2F/G rocket from the vast Gobi Desert, Inner Mongolia, in 2011, as a beacon of China’s ambition to become a space power.

The 10.4-metre long spacecraft is China’s first prototype space station and served as an experimental testbed for future projects.

China’s National Space Administration (CNSA) utilised Tiangong-1 for testing vital orbital and docking technology, successfully receiving one uncrewed and two crewed missions - including the country’s first female astronaut, Liu Yang, in 2012.