Chinese rocket falling to Earth this weekend poses extremely low risk to people

Another “out-of-control” Chinese rocket stage in orbit has spawned a news cycle. But for people on Earth, there’s not much to worry about.

The 100-foot-tall, 22-metric-ton corpse of a Chinese Long March 5B rocket that launched the first chunk of Beijing’s new space station last week will reenter Earth’s atmosphere sometime this weekend, and there’s an extremely high chance that pieces of the rocket will splash down in the ocean, analysts say.

“Much of the earth is covered in water, so there’s almost no risk,” said Dan Oltrogge, founder of the Space Safety Coalition and top policy expert at AGI’s Commercial Space Operations Operations Center. The risk to the public isn’t zero, he said, “but it’s a whole lot less” if it’s heading for the...

Continue reading…