A 20-ton rocket is plummeting towards Earth and scientists don't know where it will land

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China used its Long March 5B rocket to launch the second module of the Tiangong Space Station on Sunday.

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Now that rocket is hurdling uncontrollably back towards Earth during reentry, making it challenging to predict where it might fall.

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You are probably familiar with this story if it sounds like it

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A similar uncontrolled reentry of the rocket's core stage occurred with China's previous two launches of this rocket in 2020 and 2021.

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This 10-story-tall rocket is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere on Saturday at 2:24 p.m. EDT

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according to The Aerospace Corporation, a business that monitors the reentries of space debris. However, there is a 6-hour window.

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The reentry encounters unknowns, which is why there is such a big window.

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The reentry window can differ depending on the location of the Earth's atmosphere, solar weather, and even the rocket's materials' melting points.

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The rocket might reenter overhead anywhere between 41.5 degrees North and South latitude. Florida and a large portion of the United States are included in this.

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The areas with the best chances of reentry are those at latitudes as high as +/- 41.5 degrees.

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There is a non-zero chance that the rocket crashes down over a populous region, even though an ocean crash landing, like the one we witnessed in 2021, is most plausible.

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