Part of a Massive, Uncontrolled Rocket Will Crash to Earth This Sunday. Here's What We Know

There is a high chance that at least some of the debris will be large enough to survive the descent and smash into our planet.

The booster weighs around 23 metric tons and is a Chinese rocket.

The chances of this latest descent causing significant damage are low. The good news is that we don't have a good idea of where the booster will end up.

The researchers are pretty sure that the reentry will happen on July 31, 2022, and that it will fall under the swirling lines in the map below.

The predictions for reentering were made on July 27th. TheAerospace Corporation.

There are yellow and blue lines in the picture. The yellow icon shows where the rocket booster will be at the middle of the window, and the orange line shows where it will be visible.

Almost 90 percent of the world's population lives under the potential debris footprint of the booster's descent, according to the company that's tracking it.

The rule of thumb is that 20% to 40% of the mass of a large object will reach the ground, though it depends on the design of the object.

Our latest prediction for #CZ5B rocket body reentry is: 🚀31 Jul 2022 00:24 UTC ± 16 hours

Reentry will be along one of the ground tracks shown here. It is still too early to determine a meaningful debris footprint. Follow this page for updates:  https://t.co/SxrMtcJnj0 pic.twitter.com/CZRQBClOAg

— The Aerospace Corporation (@AerospaceCorp) July 28, 2022

You're right if this sounds familiar. The debris from last year's event landed in the Indian Ocean.

Parts of a rocket booster crashed near Africa'sIvory Coast in 2020, but there were no major injuries.

The Long March 5B rocket, which was launched by China's National Space Administration (CNSA) on 24 July 2022, with the job of delivering a new module into orbit to help build the country's growing Tiangong space station, came from the same rocket.

The booster helps propel a rocket out of the atmosphere. Once the rocket is in space, the first stage falls free.

Once released they are guided back to the surface and ready for another mission.

NASA's boosters are usually used to fall back through the atmosphere at the end of a parachute and into a predictable area. They are picked up by ships and refurbished.

This particular booster is a little more difficult to track because it doesn't reach the space station.

The core boosters of China's Long March 5B are expected to make it back through the atmosphere.

It's good to know that a study came out estimating the chance that someone will be killed by falling space junk over the next decade, and that there's only a 10% chance of one or more death.

According to Ted Muelhaupt, an analyst for theAerospace Corporation, the risk of a single person is six times the risk of a single trillion.

The majority of the planet's surface is water, desert, or jungle.

If you're lucky, you can see the booster's return to Earth from a safe distance this weekend.