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It's almost crash time for China's falling space station Tiangong-1. As school bus-sized space station began what should be its last day in orbit today (April 1), experts weighed in on the possibilities of space debris – and whether this situation should have happened in the first place. Tiangong-1 is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere sometime between Sunday evening and early Monday, according to the European Space Agency. The latest forecast from the non-profit Aerospace Corp. pegged the space station crash at 8:30 p.m. EDT tonight (0030 GMT Monday, April 2), give or take 1.7 hours. But the time of...

The following tables and figures report the predicted re-entry time and the ground bands where the re-enter may occur, according to the current available data. Predictions will become more accurate as the re-entry time approaches.

The Tiangong-1 space station, which is hurtling towards Earth carrying a 'highly toxic chemical', will likely hit sometime between March 24 and April 19... Exactly where it will hit is slightly harder to predict, although experts agree it will be somewhere between latitudes of 43° north and 43° south. On September 14, 2016, China made an official statement predicting Tiangong-1 would reenter the atmosphere in the latter half of 2017. (???)

We could be less than a year away from the launch of Tiangong-1, China's first space laboratory. We've been expecting this launch for years, but relatively little is still known about this mission. We have grown used to seeing computer-generated artwork of this small, stubby laboratory module, not much larger than the Shenzhou crew-carrying spacecraft that will dock with it. China Central Television has also broadcast short video clips showing the module undergoing assembly, and periodically, a short news report on the mission pops up in the Chinese media. Beyond this, not much is really known about Tiangong. We don't...