Still, the ocean remains the safest bet for where the debris will land, he said, just because it takes up most of the Earth’s surface. And so if you’re an hour out at guessing when it comes down, you’re 18,000 miles out in saying where.” “The thing is traveling at like 18,000 miles an hour. And in that two-day period, it goes around the world 30 times,” McDowell said. “We expect it to reenter sometime between the eighth and 10th of May. That enormous range is, in part, a result of the rocket’s blistering speed – even slight changes in circumstance can drastically change its trajectory. 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.Ĭhinese rocket debris is expected to crash into Earth soon. And so I would not lose one second of sleep over this on a personal threat basis,” Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Astrophysics Center at Harvard University, told CNN this week. “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. The good news is that debris plunging toward Earth – while unnerving – generally poses very little threat to personal safety. The rocket’s “exact entry point into the Earth’s atmosphere” can’t be pinpointed until within hours of reentry, Howard said, but the 18th Space Control Squadron is providing daily updates on the rocket’s location through the Space Track website. The Long March 5B rocket, which is around 100 feet tall and weighs 22 tons, is expected to enter Earth’s atmosphere “around May 8,” according to a statement from Defense Department spokesperson Mike Howard, who said the US Space Command is tracking the rocket’s trajectory. A large Chinese rocket that is out of control is set to reenter Earth’s atmosphere this weekend, bringing a final wave of concern before its debris makes impact somewhere on Earth.
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