China

CHINA said on Friday the risk of damage from a rocket falling back to Earth was “extremely low”, after the US warned it could crash in an inhabited area.

Military experts in the US expect the body of the Long March 5B rocket, which separated from Beijing’s space station, to come down this weekend, but warned it was difficult to predict where it would land and when.

The probability of it causing harm to aviation activities or (to people and activities) on the ground is extremely low,” China’s foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said, adding that most of the rocket’s components would be destroyed upon re-entry into the atmosphere.