A Chinese space station’s mysterious manoeuvres have sparked fears it’s about to plunge to Earth.

Earlier this year, Beijing’s Tiangong 1 satellite burned up over the South Pacific after spending months locked in a death spiral.

Now Tiangong-2, its sister craft, was spotted diving 60 miles toward the surface of our planet before mysteriously climbing back to its usual orbital height.

A drawing of the Tiangong-2, a Chinese Space Station

The Tiangong-2 roars into the air on the back of a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on September 15, 2016. (Photo: Xinhua/Ju Zhenhua)

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The strange movements suggest China has a plan for its spaceship.



Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Space News: ‘It seems likely that the lowering of Tiangong-2’s orbit is the first step in safely disposing of it.’

McDowell also published several tweets about the second space station’s ‘weird’ behaviour in which he suggested China could be testing out the craft’s engines ahead of a scheme to steer it to a fiery end in Earth’s atmosphere.

OK now that's weird. New orbit data for Tiangong 2 shows it back in the 390 km orbit after spending 10 days in the lower 295 km orbit. Wonder what that was about?? — Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) June 23, 2018

Possibly just testing out the spacelab's engine reliabiity after 2 years in orbit, as part of end-of-life tests? — Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) June 23, 2018

The 10.5m long and 3.4m wide Tiangong-2 dipped from its usual height of 242 miles on June 13 and dropped to 183 miles.

Although you probably don’t want to be standing anywhere near Tiangong-2 if it crashes to Earth, it may give you some comfort to know that falling man-made space debris has never killed a human here on Earth.

Tiangong-1 was packed full of the toxic chemical hydrazine which can result in irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat as well as dizziness, headache, nausea, pulmonary edema, seizures and even coma in just small doses.

However, no-one was hurt when it burned up over the vast Pacific Ocean.

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