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China’s second space station, Tiangong-2, is coming back to Earth as planned. It will finish its two-year mission as a temporary space station and start de-orbiting for a controlled destruction in the middle of next year.

After a year of delay, Tiangong-2 blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert of northern China, in September 2016. This 8.6-tonne spacecraft serves as a laboratory for 14 experiments including a plant cultivation study, a quantum communication experiment, and a robotic arm.

One month after its launch, Tiangong-2 hosted two astronauts for 30 days. They were carried to the space station by China’s Shenzhou-11 capsule. Last year, China’s first unmanned cargo vessel – Tianzhou-1 – successfully docked with and refuelled the space station.

Tiangong-2 is currently operating in a near-circular orbit about 400 kilometres above us, according to the China Manned Space Engineering Office. To de-orbit, the spacelab’s engine will need to thrust the ship out of its current orbit and towards Earth.

Earlier this year, Tiangong-1, China’s first space station, came crashing down to Earth after the ground operators lost control during the de-orbit operation. The country’s space agency says that Tiangong-2 is equipped with multiple features to control the de-orbit procedure. They also have contingency plans in place in case of emergencies.

Both the Tiangong space stations are precursors to China’s permanent space station. The Chinese Space Station, with one-sixth the mass of the International Space Station, is planned to launch around 2022.