Tiangong 1, the Chinese Space Station launched in 2011, is scheduled to come tumbling back to Earth sometime before April 2018. The Chinese have known about this since last year, when they announced they had lost the telemetry signal from the station.
After a series of successful internal tests in March 2012, Shenzhou 9 blasted off June 16 with three astronauts, Commander Jing Haipeng, Liu Wang, and Liu Yang (first Chinese woman in space) and docked with the space station. They returned June 29.
The following June, Shenzhou 10 docked with the space station with another crew of three: Commander Nie Haisheng, Zhang Xiaoguang and Wang Yaping (second Chinese woman in space). It was the second and final trip to Tiangong 1. After they left, the space station was put into 'sleep mode'.
Tiangong 1 has gone past its useful life and the Chinese had predicted they would be able to control its re-entry, but with the telemetry link lost, it will re-enter Earth's atmosphere uncontrolled. Nobody knows where it will land. Most of Earth's surface is uninhabited, but there is exists the remote possibility that some of the station's parts may reach ground and hit an inhabited area.
Just giving y'all a heads-up!
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