Experts expect a large Chinese rocket to reenter the Earth's atmosphere, at some point this weekend, as it is spiraling out of control towards the planet. The Long March 5B rocket measures 100 feet tall and weighs 22 tons; however, much of the debris will likely burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.
"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," Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Astrophysics Center at Harvard University, told CNN this week.
China's rocket is a part of a growing trend towards more and more space debris becoming a concern. There are estimated to be hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris orbiting Earth, most of which burn up in the atmosphere.
"We expect it to reenter sometime between the eighth and 10th of May. And in that two-day period, it goes around the world 30 times," McDowell continued. "The thing is traveling at like 18,000 miles an hour. And so if you're an hour out at guessing when it comes down, you're 18,000 miles out in saying where."
[Via]
