It’s unlikely that the Chinese Rocket Body will fall to Earth this weekend.

China successfully launched the third and final piece of its new Tiangong space station on Monday — and the rocket’s 23-ton body is coming back down somewhere on Earth this weekend.

China’s Long March 5B rocket launched the Mengtian module. It carries science experiments. The rocket’s core stage gave the space station module one more push into Earth’s orbit as it was climbing into space. It then detach itself.

Contrary to most modern rocket bodies which push themselves into the Pacific Ocean, Long March 5B fell into its orbit around Earth. It’s on track to descend into the atmosphere again — an event called “reentry” — and fall to Earth on Friday or in the morning Saturday in the Eastern time zone.

Nobody knows exactly where the rocket body is going to land and no one can control it. It’s highly unlikely that any space debris will impact you.

Forecast: It’s going rain rocket parts

Experts cannot estimate the amount of Long March’s rocket body that will hit the Earth. It is approximately the same size as a 10-story building. It will likely catch fire as it travels through the atmosphere. However, the rocket body is too big to be completely disintegrated.

According to experts from the Aerospace Corporation, 20%-40% of large objects will survive the fall through the atmosphere. Previously told Insider.

It’s still too early to tell exactly where the core stage might fall — most likely in pieces. Aerospace Corporation tracks the rocket stage and predicts the possible routes it may take to Earth.

According to these analysts, 88% of the land where debris could fall is covered by that area. Calculations. This population is however concentrated in a few locations. The vast majority of debris-prone areas are found in uninhabited or open ocean.

However, leaders in the space industry remain optimistic. China’s uncontrolled reentry policy was condemnedIt poses an unacceptable risk to life and property.

As the rocket body moves closer to reentry, the estimates will increase.

This is the fourth occasion that a fragment from China’s Long March 5B Rocket has endangered lives or property. Each of the three times the rocket launched — in 2020, 2021, and in July 2022 — chunks of its body fell back to Earth.

In May 2020, debris from one of those rockets was discovered near two villages in Ivory Coast, reportedly causing Property damage. China stated that the remnants of the rocket crashed into the Indian Ocean near Maldives in 2021. According to the New York Times.

In July of this year, parts of the booster were removed from the rocket. Returned to Earth after being crashedWith several likely pieces discoveredBoth the Indonesian and Malaysian sides of Borneo as well as the ocean close to it. Philippines.

Rocket stages usually bring themselves down by starting their engines again shortly after they have delivered their cargo to orbit. This allows them to steer away from densely populated areas and into open ocean. China did not design the Long March 5B rocket booster for controlled return.

John Logsdon (founder of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute) said, “Rockets are launched all the time and very rarely is there concern about the reentry.” InsiderIn May 2021, while the world waited for a falling rocket body. “So yeah, this is happening.

“Is this just a willful disregard of international guidelines?” Or is it because the vehicle is new, it was not properly designed to allow for controlled reentry? Whatever,” Logsdon said, adding, “It’s unfortunate that it puts a lot of people at risk.”

In a StudyResearchers published their findings in Nature journal in July. They calculated that there is a 10% chance of debris hitting one or more people in a period of 10 years. It’s not only Chinese rocket bodies. Spacecraft and unknown debris regularly fall from orbit.

Jonathan McDowell is an Harvard Astronomer who has meticulously tracked objects in Earth’s orbit and said, “If you roll too many dice, someone will be lucky.” Insider.

Ted Muelhaupt, an Aerospace Corporation consultant. Reentry databaseInsider was previously informed that an object of at least 1 Ton falls from orbit, and then reenters it’s atmosphere on a weekly basis.

Although the Long March 5B boosters are some of the most massive objects that have fallen back to Earth, uncontrolled reentry isn’t just a problem for China. NASA’s Skylab space station quickly fell in 1979 scattering debris across Australia. Controlled reentry is now a standard practice.