Chinese space station Tiangong-2 is about to burn up over the Pacific

The final hours for China's Tiangong-2 space station are at hand, as the eight-ton piece of hardware will fall to earth, or rather sea, some time in the next 20 hours or so in a controlled deorbit maneuver. Tiangong-2 is a small space station that was put into orbit in 2016 to test a number of China's orbital technologies; it was originally planned to stay up there for two years, but as many a well-engineered piece of space kit has done, it greatly exceeded its expected lifespan and has been operational for more than a thousand days now. The China National Space Administration indicated that the 18-meter-wide station and solar panels will mostly burn up during reentry, but that a small amount of debris may fall "in a safe area in the South Pacific," specifying a rather large area that does technically include quite a bit of New Zealand (160-190°W long by 30-45°S lat).