It’s a bird?

It’s a plane?

No, it’s actually a wayward Chinese rocket, and it could be heading our way.

From Michael Tanenbaum at Philly Voice:

Last Wednesday, China launched its Long March 5B rocket to serve as the core module of its planned Tianhe Space Station. The core stage of the launcher detached from the module as planned, but there doesn’t appear to have been a safe maneuver to deorbit the core’s remnants for a controlled re-entry.

“This core stage is now also in orbit and is likely to make an uncontrolled reentry over the next days or week as growing interaction with the atmosphere drags it to Earth,” SpaceNews reported. “If so, it will be one of the largest instances of uncontrolled reentry of a spacecraft and could potentially land on an inhabited area.”

….

Weather forecasts over the coming days suggest that if the core were to crash somewhere in the United States, several locations appear to be in its path, according to Weatherboy.com:

It is too early to say with a high degree of certainty where the rocket or its debris will ultimately crash, but forecasts show if an impact were to occur in the United States, the eastern U.S. would have the highest odds of seeing impact. Chicago, Buffalo, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Dover, Atlantic City, Richmond, Gainesville and Jacksonville are among the eastern U.S. cities the rocket is expected to pass over and perhaps crash into.

Well isn’t this just great. I’m sure China just conveniently forgot to think about how they were going to “deorbit the core’s remnants for a controlled re-entry.” This may have been their plan all along, as revenge for Daryl Morey’s Hong Kong comments. Now everybody’s gotta be on alert. We don’t know where this damn thing is gonna land. Delco? Boyertown? On top of the Pagoda in Reading?

Best case scenario, the remnants come down in East Rutherford, obliterating the Giants practice facility (but not hurting anybody in the process). Then they lose out on vital offseason training and slump to a 0-17 regular season record, as DeVonta Smith goes for 4 touchdowns and 225 yards on 15 receptions spread out over two games.

Go Birds.