is the falling #Chinese space station gonna hit you? it is predicted to fall anywhere in the world.

Sometime in late March of next year, a Chinese space station named Tiangong-1 is going to fall back down to Earth — and some big pieces may survive the reentry. The module’s descent has caused a bit of concern about debris raining form the sky. But in reality, a falling space station is the last thing anyone should be worried about.

Satellites and spacecraft fall to Earth all the time. Vehicles in lower orbits get bombarded by small particles in the planet’s upper atmosphere, and that eventually drags them downward. But usually, these falling objects are small enough or shaped in such a way that they’ll burn up safely while re-entering the atmosphere.
The problem with Tiangong-1 is that it’s rather massive. Launched in 2011, Tiangong-1 — or “Heavenly Place” — served as China’s first ever crewed space station. The module weighs nearly 19,000 pounds and it’s pretty dense too. And it’s estimated that around 10 to 40 percent of a spacecraft will make it down the ground. For small satellites, that’s not much. For Tiangong-1, that’s between 2,000 and 8,000 pounds.

With space vehicles of this size or bigger, operators usually have a plan to safely get rid of them when they’ve reached the end of their mission. If a large vehicle has thrusters, it’s possible to use the spacecraft’s remaining fuel to fire those engines intentionally and dump it over the ocean. Or you can send up another spacecraft with an engine to dock with the decay vehicle and plunge it somewhere safe.