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China's 'Heavenly Palace' Space Lab Will Crash Back To Earth

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China's first-ever space lab will be returning to Earth in late 2017, and "most parts" of the spacecraft will burn up on re-entry, the country's space program announced last week.The news came after months of speculation that China had lost control of the Tiangong-1, or "Heavenly Palace-1," the space lab that was launched in 2011 with great fanfare.In June, a satellite tracker named Thomas Dorman told Space.com that his observations suggested Tiangong-1 is in a "slow roll," with solar panels in an incorrect orientation, and is on track for an uncontrolled fall out of orbit."If I am right, China will wait until the last minute to let the world know it has a problem," he said.China's Xinhua state news agency reported on the news of the pending re-entry of the spacecraft without indicating whether the space agency had lost control of the vehicle.The space lab was originally meant to operate for two years, and its last manned mission was in 2013. It continued to gather data for several

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