Segments of a large Chinese rocket are expected to fall back to Earth in an uncontrolled re-entry this weekend.
The rocket is set to renter Earth's atmosphere this week amid concerns its debris makes an impact somewhere on Earth.
The "exact entry point into the Earth's atmosphere" can't be pinpointed but at 18 tonnes it is one of the largest items in decades to have an undirected dive into the atmosphere.
Our latest prediction for #LongMarch5B CZ-5B rocket body reentry is 🚀 09 May 2021 04:19 UTC ± 8 hours along the ground track shown here. Follow this page for updates: https://t.co/p2AU9zVEpA pic.twitter.com/rsE6yzcnHb
— The Aerospace Corporation (@AerospaceCorp) May 7, 2021
The main segment from the Long March-5b vehicle was used to launch the first module of China's new space station last month.
Most of the debris should burn up when it makes its final plunge through the atmosphere.
Jonathan McDowell from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, US, told CNN: "The risk that there will be some damage or that it would hit someone is pretty small -- not negligible, it could happen -- but the risk that it will hit you is incredibly tiny. And so I would not lose one second of sleep over this on a personal threat basis."
The European Space Agency has predicted a "risk zone" that encompasses "any portion of Earth's surface between about 41.5N and 41.5S latitude" -- which includes virtually all of the Americas south of New York, all of Africa and Australia, parts of Asia south of Japan and Europe's Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece.
Hugh Lewis, who models space debris at Southampton University posted on Twitter: "It's worth remembering that there are approximately 900 orbital rocket stages in low-Earth orbit, left behind by nearly every launch-capable nation and with a combined mass orders or magnitude greater than the one expected to re-enter the atmosphere this [weekend]"
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