Tiangong-1 is expected pass over Brevard County tonight from 7:02 p.m. to 7:09 p.m. EST. You can see a dramatic preview of the little space station Tiangong-1 when the big International Space Station (ISS) flies by about 10 minutes earlier.
The Tiangong-1 is a space station program of the People's Republic of China. This prototype module was launched in September 2011. Tonight may be one of the last chances to see this pioneering craft of the Chinese space program.
The Tiangong-1 ("Heavenly Palace") was the target of both unmanned and manned docking maneuvers with spacecraft from the Shenzhou series. That is, "manned" in the general sense, because the missions to Tiangong-1 included China's first female astronauts, Liu Yang and Wang Yaping.
China has already completed the missions planned for Tiangong-1, and had announced plans in September 2013 to de-orbit Tiangong-1 in the next few months. For now, it is still circling the earth. When the Chinese decide to end the mission, final reentry will probably be directed into the Pacific Ocean to reduce the chances of hitting anything with any debris that withstands the fall through the atmospheres.
The China National Space Agency expects to launch an even more advanced space station, Tiangong-2, by 2015.
Assuming it hasn't been de-orbited, Tiangong-1 will pass over Brevard County tonight from 7:02 p.m. to 7:09 p.m. EST. It is expected to shine at magnitude 2.6, which is fairly bright. It will not take a high pass through the sky. Instead, it will rise slowly out of the west heading at an angle toward the north.
It will only reach a maximum altitude of 26 degrees in the constellation Cepheus before bowing back down to pass about 6 degrees below Polaris, the North Star. By the time it reaches the Big Dipper, Tiangong-1 will enter the Earth's shadow and be eclipsed.
You can see a dramatic preview of the little space station Tiangong-1 when the big International Space Station (ISS) flies by about 10 minutes earlier. Because of its massive size, the ISS is magnitude -1.2 -almost as bright as Sirius, the brightest star. The ISS will take very nearly the same track, but its pass begins at 6:53 p.m. and ends in the Big Dipper at 7:02 p.m., just as the Tiangong-1 rises up. So get out a bit earlier and see two space stations for the price of one.