CHANCES OF ROCKET FALLING ON INHABITED ZONE ‘ONE IN A MILLION’, SAYS HARVARD ASTRONOMER
Harvard-based astronomer Jonathan McDowell tweeted on Saturday: “New 18SPCS Space Force prediction narrows things down to one orbit: Costa Rica, Haiti, Iberia, Sardinia, Italy, Greece and Crete, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Australia, New Zealand.”
Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has said the US military has no plans to shoot the rocket segment down, but suggested that China had been negligent in letting it fall out of orbit.
“Given the size of the object, there will necessarily be big pieces left over,” said Florent Delefie, an astronomer at the Paris-PSL Observatory.
“The chances of debris landing on an inhabited zone are tiny, probably one in a million.”
Last year, debris from another Long March rocket fell on villages in the Ivory Coast, causing structural damage but no injuries or deaths.
