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An out-of-control Chinese space station carrying toxic chemicals is set to crash to Earth very soon.

The Chinese government this week issued a warning about its Tiangong-1 space lab, which is set to plunge into our atmosphere as early as Easter Sunday.

Though it has attempted to reassure the world about the spacecraft, the country still has no idea where parts of the space station will land.

The bus-sized space station, weighing 8.5-tons, is predicted to reenter Earth’s atmosphere around 2pm GMT on April 1, according to the latest estimates.

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Although most of the craft will burn up when it ploughs into the atmosphere, between 10 and 40% of its mass could survive and plunge to Earth.

This means it could crash into a number of highly populated areas, such as New York, Barcelona, Beijing, Chicago, Istanbul, Rome and Toronto.

As if that wasn’t scary enough, it’s been claimed the Tiangong-1 space station is packed full of a toxic and corrosive chemical called hydrazine.

This is the stuff used in rocket fuel and long-term exposure is believed to cause cancer in humans.

Fortunately, China has said it’s unlikely large pieces of the space station will crash to earth.

Speaking at a daily news briefing, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the government had been continually informing the UN.space agency of the latest information about the Tiangong-1.

China had been responsible and transparent, Lu said.

‘If there is a need, we will promptly be in touch with the relevant country,’ he said.

‘As to what I have heard, at present the chances of large fragments falling to the ground are not very great, the probability is extremely small.’

The 34.1 ft Tiangong-1, or ‘Heavenly Palace 1’, China’s first space lab, was launched into orbit in 2011 to carry out docking and orbit experiments as part of China’s ambitious space programme, which aims to place a permanent station in orbit by 2023.

It was originally set to be decommissioned in 2013 but China has repeatedly extended its mission, leading some scientists to believe that it has gone out of control.

Advancing China’s space programme is a priority for President Xi Jinping, who has called for Beijing to become a global space power with both advanced civilian space flight and capabilities that strengthen national security.

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MORE: Fraudsters posed as French president’s wife to get into VIP events</s>BEIJING (Reuters) - It is unlikely that any large parts of China’s Tiangong-1 space lab will reach the ground when it falls to Earth, and China has been in close touch with the United Nations about its progress, China’s foreign ministry said on Friday.

The craft is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at some time from this week, according to China’s manned space programme, but no one knows for sure where.

Speaking at a daily news briefing, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the government had been continually informing the U.N. space agency of the latest information about the Tiangong-1.

China had been responsible and transparent, Lu said.

“If there is a need, we will promptly be in touch with the relevant country,” he said.

“As to what I have heard, at present the chances of large fragments falling to the ground are not very great, the probability is extremely small.”

The 10.4-metre-long (34.1-foot) Tiangong-1, or “Heavenly Palace 1”, China’s first space lab, was launched into orbit in 2011 to carry out docking and orbit experiments as part of China’s ambitious space programme, which aims to place a permanent station in orbit by 2023.

It was originally set to be decommissioned in 2013 but China has repeatedly extended its mission, leading some scientists to believe that it has gone out of control.

Advancing China’s space programme is a priority for President Xi Jinping, who has called for Beijing to become a global space power with both advanced civilian space flight and capabilities that strengthen national security.</s>BEIJING: China's defunct space lab could hurtle back to Earth later than previously forecast, with the European Space Agency (ESA) saying it may re-enter the atmosphere as late as Monday (Apr 2) morning GMT.

The ESA, which is tracking the craft, had earlier given a window of between midday Saturday and early Sunday afternoon GMT.

Chinese authorities have said the roughly eight-tonne Tiangong-1 is unlikely to cause any damage when it comes down and that its fiery disintegration will offer a "splendid" show akin to a meteor shower.

The abandoned craft is expected to make its plunge between the afternoon of Sunday and early Monday morning GMT, the ESA said in a blog post announcing its revised forecast.

In its update Saturday, the agency said calmer space weather was now expected as a high-speed stream of solar particles did not cause an increase in the density of the upper atmosphere, as previously expected.

Such an increase in density would have pulled the spacecraft down sooner, it said.

The re-entry window remains "highly variable", the ESA cautioned. There is similar uncertainty about where debris from the lab could land.

But there is "no need for people to worry", the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) said earlier on its WeChat social media account.

Such falling spacecraft do "not crash into the Earth fiercely like in sci-fi movies, but turn into a splendid (meteor shower) and move across the beautiful starry sky as they race towards the Earth", it said.

Tiangong-1 - or "Heavenly Palace" - was placed in orbit in September 2011 and had been slated for a controlled re-entry, but it ceased functioning in March 2016 and space enthusiasts have been bracing for its fiery return since.

The ESA said the lab will make an "uncontrolled re-entry" as ground teams are no longer able to fire its engines or thrusters for orbital adjustments.

A Chinese spaceflight engineer, however, denied earlier this year that it was out of control.

China will step up efforts to coordinate with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs as the re-entry nears, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters on Friday.

Beijing sees its multi-billion-dollar space programme as a symbol of the country's rise. It plans to send a manned mission to the moon in the future.

China sent another lab, Tiangong-2, into orbit in September 2016 as a stepping stone to its goal of having a crewed space station by 2022.

During the re-entry, atmospheric drag will rip away solar arrays, antennas and other external components at an altitude of around 100km, according to the Chinese space office.

The intensifying heat and friction will cause the main structure to burn or blow up, and it should disintegrate at an altitude of around 80km, it said.

Most fragments will dissipate in the air and a small amount of debris will fall relatively slowly before landing across hundreds of square kilometres, most likely in the ocean, which covers more than 70 per cent of the Earth's surface.

Experts have downplayed any concerns about the Tiangong-1 causing any damage when it hurtles back to Earth, with the ESA noting that nearly 6,000 uncontrolled re-entries of large objects have occurred over the past 60 years without harming anyone.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, estimates that Tiangong-1 is the 50th most massive uncontrolled re-entry of an object since 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 - the world's first artificial satellite.

At an altitude of 60km to 70km, debris will begin to turn into "a series of fireballs", which is when people on the ground will "see a spectacular show", he said.</s>Emergency services in Michigan in the United States have been put on standby for fear China’s out of control space station might crash into the state.

Tiangong-1 is currently hurtling towards Earth and expected to land any day. While most of the 8.5 tonne structure is likely to burn up as it re-enters the atmosphere, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder said on Friday said that “there is concern that debris could make landfall”.

Based on its current trajectory, scientists have said the space station could land anywhere from Australia to the United States, with the southern part of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula included in the strip of the US – from northern California to Pennsylvania – where it might crash down.

China’s space lab could crash to Earth on Saturday, scientists say

“While the chances are slim that any of the debris will land in Michigan, we are monitoring the situation and are prepared to respond quickly if it does,” said Chris Kelenske, deputy director of the state’s police, emergency management and homeland security division.

“The state will rely on its existing satellite re-entry response and recovery plan for any necessary response protocols,” he said.

According to a statement by the state government, the debris could contain hydrazine, which is a highly toxic and corrosive substance. All matter thought to have come from the space station should therefore be considered hazardous, and anyone who suspects they have encountered some should call 911 and maintain a safe distance of at least 150 feet (46 metres).

On Monday, the China Manned Space Engineering Office said the space lab was expected to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere “between March 31 and April 4, 2018”.

The announcement was the first time Chinese authorities had admitted the spacecraft was out of control on its return to Earth.

Tiangong-1, which means “Heavenly Palace 1” in Chinese, was launched into orbit on September 29, 2011. In the years that followed it was used in docking and orbiting experiments as part of China’s ambitious space programme, which aims to put a permanent space station in orbit by the early 2020s.

The 10-metre-long craft, about the size of a school bus, cost hundreds of millions of yuan to build. The laboratory comprised several modules and was able to support up to three astronauts for two weeks at a time.

China’s secret 1960s mission to send two dogs into space

In its lifetime it was involved in six rendezvous and docking missions with manned Shenzhou spacecraft, and made “significant contributions to the development of China’s manned space mission”, space authorities said.

On March 16, 2016, Tiangong-1 terminated its data service, officially ending its mission and starting its orbital decay.

Nasa’s 85-tonne Skylab space station is the largest spacecraft ever to make an uncontrolled return to Earth. Several large pieces of debris from it crashed into the Australian town of Esperance in 1979.</s>A Chinese space station Tiangong-1 will smash into the Earth and cause mass devastation

A Chinese space station will smash into the Earth later than expected due to changes in the sun's predicted activity, the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Space Debris Office in Germany predicted.

Tiangong-1 is now set to enter the Earth’s atmosphere on April 1 at 12:15pm EDT (16:15 GMT), according to the Aerospace Corp.

ESA officials said: "A high-speed stream of particles from the sun, which was expected to reach Earth and influence our planet's geomagnetic field, did, in fact, not have any effect, and calmer space weather around Earth and its atmosphere is now expected in the coming days.

"This means that the density of the upper atmosphere, through which Tiangong-1 is moving, did not increase as predicted (which would have dragged the spacecraft down sooner), and hence the ESA Space Debris Office has adjusted the predicted decay rate."</s>BEIJING (AP) — China’s defunct and reportedly out-of-control Tiangong 1 space station is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere sometime this weekend. It poses only a slight risk to people and property on the ground, since most of the bus-size, 8.5-ton vehicle is expected to burn up on re-entry, although space agencies don’t know exactly when or where that will happen.

Below are some questions and answers about the station, its re-entry and the past and future of China’s ambitious space program.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN AND HOW GREAT IS THE DANGER?

The European Space Agency predicts the station will re-enter the atmosphere between Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon — an estimate it calls “highly variable,” likely because the ever-changing shape of the upper atmosphere affects the speed of objects falling into it.

The Chinese space agency’s latest estimate puts re-entry between Saturday and Wednesday.

Western space experts say they believe China has lost control of the station. China’s chief space laboratory designer Zhu Zongpeng has denied Tiangong was out of control, but hasn’t provided specifics on what, if anything, China is doing to guide the craft’s re-entry.

Based on Tiangong 1’s orbit, it will come to Earth somewhere between latitudes of 43 degrees north and 43 degrees south, or roughly somewhere over most of the United States, China, Africa, southern Europe, Australia and South America. Out of range are Russia, Canada and northern Europe.

Based on its size, only about 10 percent of the spacecraft will likely survive being burned up on re-entry, mainly its heavier components such as its engines. The chances of anyone person on Earth being hit by debris is considered less than one in a trillion.

Ren Guoqiang, China’s defense ministry spokesman, told reporters Thursday that Beijing has been briefing the United Nations and the international community about Tiangong 1’s re-entry through multiple channels.

Debris from satellites, space launches and the International Space Station enters the atmosphere every few months, but only one person is known to have been hit by any of it: American woman Lottie Williams, who was struck but not injured by a falling piece of a U.S. Delta II rocket while exercising in an Oklahoma park in 1997.

Most famously, America’s 77-ton Skylab crashed through the atmosphere in 1979, spreading pieces of wreckage near the southwestern Australia city of Perth, which fined the U.S. $400 for littering.

The breakup on re-entry of the Columbia space shuttle in 2003 killed all seven astronauts and sent more than 80,000 pieces of debris raining down on a large swath of the Southern United States. No one on the ground was injured.

In 2011, NASA’s Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite was considered to pose a slight risk to the public when it came down to Earth 20 years after its launching. Debris from the 6-ton satellite ended up falling into the Pacific Ocean, causing no damage.

China’s own space program raised major concerns after it used a missile to destroy an out-of-service Chinese satellite in 2007, creating a large and potentially dangerous cloud of debris.

WHAT IS TIANGONG 1 AND WHAT WAS IT USED FOR?

Launched in 2011, Tiangong 1 was China’s first space station, serving as an experimental platform for bigger projects such as the Tiangong 2 launched in September 2016 and a future permanent Chinese space station.

The station, whose name translates as “Heavenly Palace,” played host to two crewed missions that included China’s first female astronauts and served as a test platform for perfecting docking procedures and other operations. Its last crew departed in 2013 and contact with it was cut in 2016. Since then it has been orbiting gradually closer and closer to Earth on its own while being monitored.

The station had two modules, one for its solar panels and engines, and one for a pair of astronauts to live in and conduct experiments. A third astronaut slept in the Shenzhou spaceships that docked with the station, which also contained facilities for personal hygiene and food preparation.

Since China conducted its first crewed mission in 2003 — becoming only the third country after Russia and the U.S. to do so — it has taken on increasingly ambitious projects, including staging a spacewalk and landing its Jade Rabbit rover on the moon.

China now operates the Tiangong 2 precursor space station facility, while the permanent station’s 20-ton core module is due to be launched this year. The completed 60-ton station is set to come into full service in 2022 and operate for at least a decade.

China was excluded from the 420-ton International Space Station mainly due to U.S. legislation barring such cooperation and concerns over the Chinese space program’s strong military connections. China’s space program remains highly secretive and some experts have complained that a lack of information about Tiangong 1’s design has made it harder to predict what might happen upon its re-entry.

A mission to land another rover on Mars and bring back samples is set to launch in 2020. China also plans to become the first country to soft-land a probe on the far side of the moon.

© 2018, The Village Reporter and/or Associated Press (AP). All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.</s>Side Note: Cosmonauts Aleksandr Volkov & Sergei Krikalev were aboard Mir during the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. When they left Earth, they were Soviets. When they returned from orbit, they were citizens of the Russian Federation. Volkov and Krikalev are the only space travelers whose citizenship changed while they were away from their planet

Click to play hilarious "no tacos for you" video (1:42)

Hey, remember whenused the fiery re-entry offor an advertising campaign?!, meaning "Peace" (or "World") in Russian, was a Soviet Space program craft, launched February19, 1986, and was intended for a 5-year mission. After the Russian Federation was established in 1991, Roskosmos continued to operate experiments on the station until 2001.Mir was scheduled to be decommissioned over the South Pacific Ocean, guided back toward Earth to burn up in atmosphere. However, it was the largest object ever to be brought back from space! Would pieces survive? The marketing department at Taco Bell Corporation created a 40x40 foot target with the words "FREE TACO HERE" around a bell bullseye, and floated it off the coast of Australia.Chris Becker, vice president of brand communications, confirmed: "If Mir rings our bell, we will offer a free taco to everyone in the USA."In one of the most precious pieces of space press ever, ABC asked the: what were the odds of Mir hitting that target? YIKES, about 1 in 7.5 billion! No tacos for you! And after all the trouble Taco Bell went through to purchase insurance, covering anticipated costs of free food upon a direct hit.dipped from its 139-mile-high orbit, and re-entered Earth's atmosphere on March 23, 2001 -- losing solar panels first, and then many larger modules broke into fragments around the 50-mile mark. Photographers captured swarms of incandescent fragments hurtling toward the sea at near-sonic speeds amid streaming smoke trails. After 86,331 orbits, Mir plunged into the ocean off the coast of New Zealand at 175 West longitude, 25 South latitude.Will Taco Bell do the same forspace station? One imagines attrition in the marketing department has resulted in a new staff, but here's hoping they give us another chance for free food.Over the coming week, most likely between March 30 - April 2, 2018, China's 8-ton orbiting lab is scheduled to fall back to Earth -- uncontrolled, as Chinese engineers have lost contact. In less-than-reassuring press releases, those who calculate possible orbital dynamics cannot say where it will crash -- only that it will definitely crash -- across a HUGE potential area. Like Mir and Skylab (1979), much of the "heavenly" orbiter is expected to burn in the upper atmosphere, but various sized pieces are still expected to hit the planet.What are the odds of it falling in your yard? Waaaaay more than 7.5 billion to 1. More like 20 trillion to 1. First off, it's only about 10% of the size of Skylab, and only the 50th largest thing to fall from the sky, planned or unplanned. However, if you're the lucky (?) recipient, be safe: do not touch it, and contact local authorities.Launched from Jiuquan September 29, 2011, the 19.4-meter-long module has been in orbit for 6 years and 181 days, and by the end of the week, will have completed nearly 38,000 orbits.Follow re-entry updates ofat the official ESA blog , or follow real-time tracking of the space station at SatFlare</s>China’s defunct space lab could hurtle back to Earth later than previously forecast, with the European Space Agency saying it may re-enter the atmosphere as late as Monday morning GMT.

The ESA, which is tracking the craft, had earlier given a window of between midday on Saturday and early Sunday afternoon GMT.

Chinese authorities have said the roughly eight-tonne Tiangong-1 is unlikely to cause any damage when it comes down and that its fiery disintegration will offer a “splendid” show akin to a meteor shower.

The abandoned craft is expected to make its plunge between the afternoon of Sunday and early Monday morning GMT, the ESA said in a blog post announcing its revised forecast.

In its update today the agency said calmer space weather was now expected as a high-speed stream of solar particles did not cause an increase in the density of the upper atmosphere, as previously expected.

Such an increase in density would have pulled the spacecraft down sooner, it said.

The re-entry window remains “highly variable”, the ESA cautioned. There is similar uncertainty about where debris from the lab could land.

But there is “no need for people to worry”, the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) said earlier on its WeChat social media account.

Such falling spacecraft do “not crash into the Earth fiercely like in sci-fi movies, but turn into a splendid (meteor shower) and move across the beautiful starry sky as they race towards the Earth”, it said.

Tiangong-1 -- or “Heavenly Palace” -- was placed in orbit in September 2011 and had been slated for a controlled re-entry, but it ceased functioning in March 2016 and space enthusiasts have been bracing for its fiery return since.

The ESA said the lab will make an “uncontrolled re-entry” as ground teams are no longer able to fire its engines or thrusters for orbital adjustments.

A Chinese spaceflight engineer, however, denied earlier this year that it was out of control.

China will step up efforts to coordinate with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs as the re-entry nears, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters on Friday.

Read more: China says Earth-bound space lab to offer splendid show like meteor shower

Beijing sees its multi-billion-dollar space programme as a symbol of the country’s rise. It plans to send a manned mission to the moon in the future.

China sent another lab, Tiangong-2, into orbit in September 2016 as a stepping stone to its goal of having a crewed space station by 2022.

During the re-entry, atmospheric drag will rip away solar arrays, antennas and other external components at an altitude of around 100 kilometres (60 miles), according to the Chinese space office.

The intensifying heat and friction will cause the main structure to burn or blow up, and it should disintegrate at an altitude of around 80 kilometres, it said.

Most fragments will dissipate in the air and a small amount of debris will fall relatively slowly before landing across hundreds of square kilometres, most likely in the ocean, which covers more than 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface.

Experts have downplayed any concerns about the Tiangong-1 causing any damage when it hurtles back to Earth, with the ESA noting that nearly 6,000 uncontrolled re-entries of large objects have occurred over the past 60 years without harming anyone.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, estimates that Tiangong-1 is the 50th most massive uncontrolled re-entry of an object since 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 -- the world’s first artificial satellite.

At an altitude of 60-70 kilometres, debris will begin to turn into “a series of fireballs”, which is when people on the ground will “see a spectacular show”, he said.</s>This weekend’s weather forecast calls for temperatures in the 50s, light winds and a very small chance of fiery remains from a falling Chinese satellite.

Tiangong-1, China’s bus-sized space lab that has been orbiting the Earth for years, is expected to crash down from the sky as soon as Saturday, according to the latest space agency estimates.

Current trajectories have the satellite falling somewhere between 43 degrees North and 43 degrees South latitude, a huge swath of the globe that includes a large amount of water but almost all of the U.S. as well as major cities around the world as far south as Argentina.

The Chinese Manned Space Agency said it unexpectedly stopped functioning in 2016 and has since been traveling downwards ever since, with a reported height of 196.4 kilometers, (122 miles) above the Earth’s surface as of late Thursday, according to China Daily.

China's space station will soon plummet to Earth

Though there is a chance that a particularly large piece of the satellite makes it down to strike the surface, scientists expect most of it to burn up in the atmosphere.

The Chinese government told the United Nations’ space committee earlier this week that “The probability of damage to aviation activities and human life and facilities on Earth is extremely low.”

But that doesn’t mean that skywatchers will not see unusual activity as the object hurtles above their heads, which is likely to create fireballs as different parts of the space lab burn up.

The website Heavens Above has a live tracker of where the satellite is above Earth at any given moment, and Space.com reports that it will likely be over the U.S. around dawn the days of this weekend.</s>With Tiangong 1 hurling toward Earth this weekend, you might want to know there's only one documented case of a piece of space debris actually hitting a person and that was in the U.S. back in 1997.

The latest data offering a time-frame for the Tiangong-1’s re-entry forecast into Earth’s atmosphere has just been released from the European Space Agency and Aerospace Corp. As of 11 a.m. on Saturday morning, March 31, the latest forecast has the Chinese space station tumbling into through the Earth’s atmosphere sometime between Sunday evening and early Monday morning, according to Space.com.

The Europen Space Agency calculates a target time for the space station to rain down on Earth of 7:25 p.m. EDT on Sunday. The Aerospace Corp. puts the re-entry a bit sooner and expects the space station to crash down at 4:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday.

Both time estimates are offered with a “give or take 8-hours” so the timeline window stretches from Sunday into Monday. This change of time also changes the locations, but on Saturday morning, they were working on that updated calculation. ESA International reports the re-entry location for this space station is somewhere within 43ºN and 43ºS. This is a huge area and they are hoping to pinpoint this down to a closer range as the weekend progresses. To view the map click here.

As of yesterday, Tiangong-1’s re-entry was expected to put it over the Pacific Ocean. If that were the case, it would offer quite a show for any boaters in the area, claimed Aerospace Corp’s Ted Muelhaupt. That has now changed, as the timeline has changed.

According to Space.com the exact location of the space station re-entry is not known today, but the uncertainty of the time and place of the re-entry has prompted some emergency preparation. One of those preparations was the activation of the state emergency operations center in Michigan to monitor the re-entry of China’s Tiangong-1 Space Station, according to an earlier article from the Inquisitr.

The bus-size space station is expected to break up as it enters the Earth’s atmosphere, but the size of the pieces that will remain intact and plummet to the Earth is not known. Some of the U.S. states are in the potential path of the space station’s re-entry point, which is a path that spans from the East Coast to the West Coast.

According to the Detroit News, the space station’s possible re-entry point includes a path in the U.S. as it makes its way around the Earth. That path goes from Northern California to Pennsylvania and all points in between, which potentially leaves quite a few folks in this nation looking toward the sky on Sunday.

Any debris that falls from this space station is potentially dangerous and authorities are warning folks to stay clear of fallen debris. Experts claim that the chance of anyone getting hit with debris from this Space Station is a long shot. With that said, there was one documented case in the world where someone was hit by falling space debris. That happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, back in 1997.

That person was in her hometown in the U.S. when she was hit back in 1997, which is described in a previous Inquisitr article from earlier this month. Her name is Lottie Williams and she was walking with friends in a park when she felt as if someone tapped her on the shoulder. Her friends were not close enough to her be the culprit but when she turned around no one was there.

About 30 minutes prior to this, Lottie and her friends saw a “spectacular fireball” streak through the sky and they were in awe of the “beautiful” sight. Then a half-hour later she felt that tap and it scared her, so she started to run. When she turned around and saw that no one was there, Lottie was perplexed.

At the same time, they heard something fall to the ground and when they looked on the ground, they found a piece of something that had the weight of an “empty soda can” to it. It looked like fabric, but it made the sound of metal if you tapped it.

After she took the piece to the local astronomy club to see if they knew what it was, it was sent to several different places to be analyzed. The final analysis came out of the University of Tulsa. This is where a professor deemed the object that had hit Lottie — a piece space junk.

It was confirmed by the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Study or CORD. Lottie was hit with a piece of falling debris from space. What hit Lottie was a piece of blackened, woven material that was part of the fuel tank in a Delta II rocket. That rocket had been launched to carry a U.S. Air Force satellite into space back in 1996.

So where will the Chinese space station debris come down? Check back for updates.
Updated predictions suggest that derelict Chinese space station Tiangong-1 will reenter Earth's atmosphere over the weekend.