Experts warn Brisbane could be in the impact zone of an out-of-control Chinese space station that’s days away from blasting back into the Earth’s atmosphere.
For the past few weeks, the descent of the Tiangong-1 space lab has been tracked by space authorities, reports Live Science.
Now some experts have pinpointed the final day of March as its re-entry date.
Dutch space watcher Marco Langbroek forecast Tiangong-1’s entry within three days of March 31.
My latest #reentry estimate for #Tiangong1:
31 March +- 3 days
The geomagnetic storm of yesterday does seem to have given it a bump.@SSC_NL
That closely matches the latest timeline from the European Space Agency (ESA) of March 30 to April 6.
But experts are having a much harder job though predicting where it will enter.
Tiangong-1 is moving too fast and too randomly for trackers to narrow it down any more precisely than somewhere between 43 degrees north latitude and 43 degrees south latitude.
It is a huge area that includes Brisbane as well as Boston, Beijing and Buenos Aires – and one that will not get more exact before the space lab hits Earth’s atmosphere.
"At no time will a precise time/location prediction from ESA be possible," the agency declared.
But even if the rogue space station re-enters our atmosphere above the Queensland city, residents shouldn’t worry about falling wreckage.
The ESA said "the personal probability of being hit by a piece of debris from the Tiangong-1 is actually 10 million times smaller than the yearly chance of being hit by lightning”.
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