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China confirmed in a press conference, that Tiangong-1, their first space station put into orbit in 2011, will re-enter and burn up in the atmosphere sometime in late 2017. There seems to be some uncertainty in when it will re-enter the atmosphere, which leads one to believe that the station is not under orbital control and that it will come back to Earth in the same manner that Skylab did in 1979.
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First Chinese Space Station Coming Back to Earth
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 25 2016, @01:15PM
Back in 2008 the US shot down a dead spy satellite [wikipedia.org] officially because it might crash into somebody (but there must have been some really good tech on it to warrant the effort). We can do it again.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Dunbal on Sunday September 25 2016, @02:51PM
No, they shot it down because there were fears that its hydrazine fuel tanks could survive the landing intact, and hydrazine is highly toxic and not something you'd like a) to fall near inhabited land b) on crops or c) into the hands of terrorists. The intercept was to make sure the tank was ruptured.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 25 2016, @05:18PM
You can't really "shoot down" something that's in orbit. All you can do it spread it out a bit. Quite a lot, in fact.