Turns out Oklahomans didn’t have to worry about falling space debris this past weekend.
China’s Tiangong-1 met a Sunday night fiery end over the South Pacific Ocean and scientists say only about 10 percent actually crash-landed on earth.
Astrophysicist Brad Tuckers told Reuters, most of the out-of-control space station, China’s first, was destroyed during re-entry.
“Most like the debris is in the ocean and even if people stumbled over it, it would just look like rubbish and be spread over a huge area,” he said.
Last week, scientists said there was a remote possibility the space station debris could land in Oklahoma, prompting stories about the last time any space debris had landed in the state.
Known as “Heavenly Palace 1”, the craft was launched in 2011 and was a testbed for orbiting and docking experiments by the Chinese space agency. Two astronaut crews visited the station using capsules in2012 and 2013.
The China Manned Space Engineering Office and the U.S. Strategic Command along with counterparts in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom confirmed the demise of the nearly 19-thousand pound space station.