China's TianGong-2 space station made an unexpected maneuver for the experts and moved much closer to the Earth.

At the same time, the Chinese department for manned flights did not report the reasons for such changes in the station's orbit, writes NV referring to Science Alert.

According to the astronomer of the Harvard-Smithsonian Institution Jonathan McDowell, since June 13, the orbital module has dropped from an ordinary altitude of about 390 kilometers to about 295 kilometers. Ten days later, the TianGong-2 station returned to its normal orbit.

McDowell says that the TianGong-2 orbit was probably reduced by the supply of two braking pulses on June 13.

This unusual maneuver suggested that the space station could soon be decommissioned. The fact is that its predecessor, the TianGong-1 station, got out of control and fell to Earth in April of this year.

"Perhaps it was just a way to test the reliability of the space lab engine after two years of work in orbit as part of the mission completion tests," wrote Jonathan McDowell.

TianGung-2 was launched in September 2016 to test life-support technologies for the future Chinese multimodule orbital station. The length of the 8.6-ton TianGong-2 station is 10.4 meters with a maximum width of 3.35 meters.

In October 2017, Chinese astronauts arrived for a 30-day stay at the station - China's longest stay in space. Most of the time, TianGong-2 worked in unmanned mode. At the moment the station has already completed all the tasks that were set before it. China intends to launch the first module of a new space station called Tianhe in about 2020.