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That said, the chances are not zero. Part of China’s largest rocket, the Long March 5B, is tumbling out of control in orbit after launching a section of the country’s new space station last week. The rocket is expected to fall to Earth in what is called “an uncontrolled re-entry” sometime on Saturday or Sunday.
Whether it splashes harmlessly in the ocean or impacts land where people live, why China’s space program let this happen — again — remains unclear. And given China’s planned schedule of launches, more such uncontrolled rocket re-entries in the years to come are possible.
For the Long March 5B booster, that could be anywhere between 41.5 degrees north latitude and 41.5 degrees south latitude. That means Chicago, located a fraction of a degree farther north, is safe, but major cities like New York could be hit by debris.
Because the booster is traveling at 18,000 miles per hour, a change of minutes shifts the debris by hundreds or thousands of miles. It is only a few hours before re-entry that the predictions become more precise.
In March, a rocket stage from a SpaceX Falcon 9 lit up the night skies over Seattle and later dropped debris over a farm in Washington State when a planned firing of the engine of the second stage to bring it down safely did not occur as planned.
