Meteors showers and an out-of-control Chinese rocket are on their way towards earth in the next 100 hours. While the lower atmospheric weather is stable over the North Island, an unpredictable series of events is about to unfold through the upper atmosphere. As mentioned in a previous post, the Eta Aquarid meteors from Halley’s comet are arriving and set to peak in the skies above the upper North Island this Friday morning between 2.25am and 5:30am in the east north east direction of the sky.
While the meteors have been heading towards earth, the Chinese space agency has lost control of a 30-metre rocket body that delivered a building structure to their space station on 29th April. According to the latest data from American Space agency Aerospace, they are currently forecasting the rocket body to commence it's vapourising plummet to earth this Sunday 9th May. The rocket has lowered by nearly 100 km while orbiting the planet in just last the 48 hours. There is still high uncertainty of the exact time and location of the final descent, but the latest forecast from Aerospace is showing an impact in the Pacific between NZ and North America at 4:37pm NZT this Sunday. The volume of debris that is expected to hit earth is not known.
We have a real time tracking page on our webpage using the N2YO tracking tool if you would like to keep an eye on the rogue rocket body. This evening the rocket body passed directly over Whangarei at 6:08pm. It is currently travelling at 27,516 km/h and making the trip around earth in just under 90 minutes. Real time tracking page on our site.
