AME Grad Student, UA Researchers Track Chinese Space Station as It Falls

As Chinese space station Tiangong-1 fell to Earth, aerospace engineering graduate student Tanner Campbell and UA astronomer Vishnu Reddy followed its descent through technology they developed with less than $2,000.

When Tiangong-1’s reentry was confirmed April 2, it was the largest manmade object to re-enter Earth's atmosphere in a decade, and Campbell and Reddy spent four months putting together an optical sensor system to track it. They hope their cost-effective system will have applications in crowdsourcing data from fire stations and training the next generation of scientists.