The Pentagon is monitoring the trajectory of a fleeing Chinese rocket: it will reenter the atmosphere and could cause a “rain of debris”.

The remains of a Chinese rocket that lost control after being launched for days will reenter Earth’s atmosphere this weekend, and large blocks could fall anywhere on the planet, the Pentagon reported on Tuesday, which monitors its trajectory.

The return of the Long March 5B (“Long March”) will not be controlled, so the 30 meter rocket return zone will be unknown until six hours before impact..

The gate News warned: “This will be one of the most important cases of an uncontrolled reentry of a spacecraft and could potentially land in a populated area.“.

However, since 70% of the Earth’s surface is made up of oceans and so many square kilometers of uninhabited areas, the chances of them bumping into someone are lower, experts said. Either way, the risk exists.

“It’s not potentially good,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard University’s Center for Astrophysics, consulted by British media. The Guardian. To back up his statement, he mentioned a background: “The last time they launched a Long March 5B rocket, they found themselves with large, long metal rods flying through the sky and damaging several buildings in Côte d’Ivoire.. Most of them burned down, but there were these huge pieces of metal that fell to the ground. We were very lucky that no one was injured. “

However, he also qualified the situation and said he didn’t think “people should take precautions.” “I’m not going to lose a lot of sleep by seeing it as a threat to my physical integrity,” he said.

On Thursday, China launched the first of three elements of its space station, the “CSS”, which will be assembled in ten missions and will be completed by the end of 2022. The central Tianhe module (“Heavenly Harmony”), the place of residence of the astronauts, it was propelled by the Long fuze March 5B, which is the 21 ton ship that will now fall somewhere on the planet.

Although the ship will be partially destroyed in the atmosphere on its return, reducing its size, potentially dangerous debris will still remain.

“The problem is, this is sheer negligence on the part of China. We cannot drop objects weighing more than 10 tons from the sky without proper control, McDowell added. Since 1990, no such situation has occurred.

Tracing the orbit of the spacecraft is currently impossible due to the number of factors that can influence the trajectory. Once the date of entry into the atmosphere is determined, the estimated drop zone will be disclosed approximately six hours in advance.

China is investing billions of dollars in its space program in an attempt to catch up with Europe, the United States and Russia. One of his most ambitious plans is to land a remote-controlled robot on Mars or send Chinese citizens to the moon by 2030.

(With information from AFP)

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