How Was China's Tiangong-1 Space Station Crash Tracked So Accurately?

China's Tiangong-1 space lab burned up in the atmosphere over the southern Pacific Ocean late last night (April 1), falling right in the middle of the window predicted by a number of organizations, including the U.S. Strategic Command's Joint Force Space Component Command (JFSCC), the U.S.-based analysis group Aerospace Corp., the China National Space Administration and the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee. The last organization is an international group that consisted of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), as well as the space agencies of 11 other nations. Space.com talked with Harvard-Smithsonian's Jonathan McDowell, who has been commenting on the school-bus-size station's uncontrolled descent and predictions throughout the deorbiting process, to understand how agencies tracked the tumbling space lab. More

(Source: Space.com - Apr 3)