China – The debris from a Chinese rocket could hit Abuja this weekend. Experts say a piece of a rocket launched by China in late April is expected to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere between late Saturday and early Sunday, according to the American news platform, NBC.
“It’s 10-stories tall and twice as heavy as a school bus, and it’s set to crash back to Earth this weekend — but no one is quite sure where or when.”
The section of China’s Long March 5B rocket is described as 98-foot-long and 20-ton and is said to be tumbling through space in an uncontrolled orbit at 18,000 miles per hour.
The rocket blasted off in April, carrying part of China’s new space station, NBC quotes experts and officials.
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Apart from Abuja, Beijing, New York, Los Angeles, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro were listed as other places the rocket could land.
In a tweet on Friday, The Aerospace Corporation, a US non-profit research firm, said its prediction for landing was eight hours on either side of 4:19 GMT on Sunday.
Don Pollacco, a physics professor at the England’s University of Warwick, said, “It will hit the atmosphere, bounce around a bit and it’s correct to say most of the planet is covered by water, so that’s where it will likely land. But there’s a chance it won’t.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters on Friday that the debris would burn up on re-entry calling its descent “common international practice.
Source – http://saharareporters.com/
