TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The National Aeronautics and Space Agency (LAPAN) assured that Indonesia is safe from the debris caused by China’s first space station Tiangong-1 which is expected to crash down the earth in a few times ahead.

According to LAPAN's Twitter social media account, as its observation in Jakarta, the last orbit of Tiangong-1 will be at the Atlantic Ocean and has passed Indonesia.

The height of Tiangong-1 has decreased by 3.2 kilometers per day on average as it starts to enter the earth.

If the altitude reaches 120 kilometers, then the station will likely to experience atmospheric reentry so that it will quickly fall towards the atmosphere. The time is expected on April 2 at 07:00 Western Indonesian Time, give or take 2 hours.

The heat and pressure as an impact of the reentry process will burn the station, and its surviving debris might scatter to thousands kilometers area.

Earlier, Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center (BACC) expected Tiangong-1 to enter the earth’s atmosphere around March 31 to April 4, 2018.

Tiangong-1 was first launched into the orbit on September 29, 2011, and it decommissioned on March 16, 2016, after the station failed to give any signal to the earth.

The orbit of Tiangong-1 will be at 43 degrees North to 43 degrees South which covered North America, South America, China, Middle East, Africa, Australia, and several areas of Europe, Pacific Ocean, and the Atlantic Ocean.

ANTARA