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A global plea is growing for Elon Musk to rescue three Chinese astronauts stranded in space after their return capsule was reportedly struck by an 'unknown object.'The Shenzhou-20 team, mission commander Senior Colonel Chen Dong and crew members Colonel Chen Zhongrui and Colonel Wang Jie, launched to China's Tiangong space station in April and were set to return home on November 5. But officials revealed this week that their spacecraft may have sustained damage while docked in orbit for the past six months.Chinese officials are unsure what struck the spacecraft, but the damage is believed to have been caused by...

Looks like china is getting its own Apollo 13 mission... The Daily Mail has the details: Three astronauts already in space for six months are now stranded in orbit after their craft may have been damaged by dangerous debris floating around Earth. China's Manned Spaceflight Agency (CMSA) has revealed that crew from its Shenzhou 20 mission will need to stay on board the Chinese station Tiangong. The team of astronauts scheduled to relieve the first group had already taken off and were on their way to swap out with them, but the astronauts aboard the space station discovered a potentially...

Analysis of swabs from China's Tiangong Space Station has revealed a new strain of bacteria sporting new adaptations for surviving outer space. Scientists have discovered a new microbe never-before-seen on Earth inside China's Tiangong space station. The new strain of bacteria, named Niallia tiangongensis after the space station, is a variant of a soil-dwelling terrestrial microbe that can cause sepsis, and was found inside one of the station's cabins. Now, a new analysis of the strain has revealed that the bacterium isn't only one of a kind, but has also picked up some key adaptations that could be helpful in...

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...