18 February 2018
The UAE Space Agency and the International Astronomical Centre, IAC, have announced a joint campaign to monitor China's Tiangong 1 Space Laboratory as it falls back to Earth. The project was launched as a joint venture between the UAE Space Agency and the IAC, which consists of three different stations distributed throughout the UAE to record astronomical phenomena in the sky. Each station has astronomical cameras directed towards the sky that automatically start recording once a meteor is detected, which may be part of a shower or a piece of space debris. Once the meteor is detected by more than one station, its path is calculated so that its source can be determined.
A prediction, performed by The Aerospace Corporation on 14 February reports that Tiangong 1 is currently expected to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere around early April of 2018 ± 1.5 weeks.
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