A Massive Rocket Is Expected To Crash Back On Earth This Weekend But No One Knows Where
The rocket is 100 feet long and its orbit is taking it near New York.
A massive section of a rocket recently launched by China is currently circling Earth at incredible speeds but it is expected to crash back down on Earth "around May 8."
The major problem? Nobody knows where the rocket stage, dubbed Long March 5B, is going to crash, and officials say they won't be able to pinpoint a collision location until just hours before it reenters Earth's atmosphere according to the U.S. Department of Defense spokesman Mike Howard.
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Howard says U.S. Space Command is actively monitoring the rocket stage's orbit and they are even providing daily updates on its location on space-track.org
Space News reports that the rocket's current orbit takes it near New York, Madrid, Beijing, southern Chile and Wellington, meaning there is a chance the rocket makes reentry over a densely populated area.
However, Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, told CNN that there is no reason to "lose one second of sleep over this," as the chance of the rocket hitting you is "incredibly tiny," and he says the rocket will most likely just crash into the Pacific ocean "because (the) Pacific is most of the Earth. It's that simple."