By Nneka Nwogwugwu
The Long March 5B Chinese rocket that is out of control is set to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere this Saturday.
The 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.
He said the US Space Command is tracking the rocket’s trajectory.
The rocket’s “exact entry point into the Earth’s atmosphere” can’t be pinpointed until within hours of re-entry, Howard said.
Howard said the 18th Space Control Squadron is providing daily updates on the rocket’s location through the Space Track website.
“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.
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.
“We expect it to re-enter sometime between the eighth and 10th of May. And in that two-day period, it goes around the world 30 times,” McDowell said.
