An abandoned space station made by China, titled Tiangong-1, is expected to crash into Earth’s atmosphere in the hours before, during, or after Easter Sunday in the United States. The Aerospace Corporation – based in El Segundo, California – gave a time estimate of 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Sunday for when the school bus-sized space station will fall into Earth. Given that the Earth is around 71 percent water, and given that the majority of the space station is unlikely to survive re-entry into the planet’s atmosphere – it’s highly unlikely that anything on land will be affected by the falling debris.
As for the area where the space station could fall, it is expected to re-enter somewhere in between 43 degrees North and 43 degrees South latitude. Nearly the entire United States is below 43 degrees North latitude as the cut-off point is Buffalo, New York and New Hampshire. On the West Coast, you’re looking at south of Oregon and Idaho – and in the midwest, Wisconsin.
The probability of being hit with any debris from space is around 1 in a trillion. The only recorded person on Earth ever to be hit by falling debris from space was a woman named Lottie Williams in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1997. Walking through the park, Williams saw a flash of light in the sky (which resembled a meteor). Shortly after she was struck in the shoulder by a small piece of debris. She was not injured.
