A part from a Russian rocket is falling back to Earth in the next 24 hours, but its landing spot is unknown, the European Space Agency has announced.
Russian rocket, Angara-A5 was launched from Russia on Dec. 27, however, according to new reporting by CNN, a large part of it is coming back unless it burns up upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
The rocket is expected to carry military payloads as well as be used in commercial satellite launches, according to Tech Times. It was supposed to reach 22,000 miles but failed to leave low-orbit and the debris is expected to fall somewhere on Earth on Thursday January 6, most likely in the Pacific Ocean. Officials should be able to update their estimations for landing spots as the rocket part gets closer to landing.
“It’s safe to say that in the next 24 hours it will be down but where, nobody can say, because in the window of several hours it will do several revolutions around the globe,” Holger Krag, the head of the European Space Agency’s Space Debris Office, told CNN.
According to the U.S. Department of Defense, more than 15,000 pieces of space debris have been documented. While Russia, the U.S., China, France and India are all responsible for the space debris, most of it has been traced back to Russia with an estimated total of 14,500 pieces.