Chinese rocket tracker - live: Falling spacecraft falls to Earth over Indian Ocean, reports say

Meteorologist Nick Stewart has captured footage of Long March 5B’s erratic fall.

“Another great pass of the out-of-control Chinese Long March 5B​ rocket body passing over eastern Iowa”, he wrote.

“The blinking is it tumbling after failing to reenter. It will return to Earth in the next few days, some of it may make it to the surface.”​

Jonathan McDowell, astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as part of the Chandra X-Ray Center, has been one of the key watchers of Long March 5B’s descent.

He will be conducting an Ask Me Anything alongside The Independent’s Science and Technology Editor Andrew Griffin, giving readers an opportunity to ask whatever they like about the spacecraft.

McDowell will answer the questions in a live stream that will be available to all registered users on Saturday. To submit questions, follow this link.

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The US military is not planning to destroy the rocket, and will instead hope that it lands harmlessly in the ocean, the defence secretary has said during a briefing.

You can read more here.

The Global Times, a tabloid published by the official People’s Daily, has described reports that the rocket is “out of control” and could cause damage as “Western hype.”

The situation is “not worth panicking about”, it said, according to industry insiders.

While China has a tighter control of the media than the US and UK, experts from other countries have echoed these sentiments - predicting that the rocket will break up and likely land in the ocean.

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“This is probably among the top ten largest objects to come down in one piece,” said Ted Muelhaupt of the Aerospace Corporation, the not-for-profit organisation which advises US government space and defence agencies, to ABC.

Muelhaupt confirmed that “the odds of it landing in an inhabited area are not great;” historically, the odds of being hit by space debris are incredibly low.

Only one person has ever been hit by debris in the planet’s long history of space flight, Muelhaupt claimed.

That was Lottie Williams, who was hit on the shoulder by a small piece of rocket in 1997.

The Independent will be holding a Q&A on the fate of the tumbling rocket. And you can submit any question you’d like to be answered.

Find more information on our AMA session here.

The Pentagon was also asked about its “procedures and plans for notifying states and also foreign countries” about the rocket’s crash.

Spokesperson John Kirby replied that the government does not “know enough right now to be able to ... formulate specific notification plans” but that “if we have information that can be of use, we’re going to share that appropriately, the State Department, through their channels ... would provide as much information to that process as possible. But I just don’t think we’re there right now.”

He stressed again that Space Command is tracking the object, but that it does not “have enough fidelity of information right now about re-entry and ... what that's going to look like to speak to specific actions one way or the other”, something other national government agencies have also said.

“We're just too far out right now to begin to speculate about what possibly could be in the offing here,” Kirby added.

The Pentagon has said it is is closely tracking Long March 5B, which has apparently retained its integrity as it orbits the planet.

A spokesperson was asked whether the government has considered “any options ... to possibly shoot at [the rocket], to maybe disintegrate it into smaller pieces” if it threatened US territories or that of its allies.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is "aware and he knows the space command is tracking, literally tracking this rocket debris," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.

“It's almost the body of the rocket, as I understand it, almost intact, coming down”, Kirby added.

“I think it's also too soon to explore options about what if anything could be done about this, until we have a better sense of where it's coming down. So I don't want to hypothesize or speculate about – about possible actions the department might or might not take here. We're tracking it, we're following it as closely as we can. It's just a little too soon right now to know where it's going to go or what if anything can be done about that.”

As Long March 5B remains seemingly uncontrollable, the United States has called for more ‘responsible’ management of rockets

“The United States is committed to addressing the risks of growing congestion due to space debris and growing activity in space and we want to work with the international community to promote leadership and responsible space behaviours,” White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said on Wednesday.

It comes as China has been criticised for not providing adequate measures for the rocket’s descent, such as boosters or a stabilisation system.

The estimations given by the European Space Agency are in UTC, so that users in other time zones can set their watches to the correct moment. It is likely the Space Force’s estimations are in the same time zone; The Independent has reached out to the agency for clarification.

Coordinated Universal Time or UTC is a world standard set by two components: International Atomic Time (TAI), which combines the output of over 400 highly precise atomic clocks, and Universal Time (UT1), which refers to the Earth's rotation.

UTC is one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) which preceded the format. Los Angeles is seven hours behind UTC, while London is one hour ahead, and Beijing is eight hours ahead.