A giant piece of space junk is hurtling towards Earth and is expected to make an uncontrolled re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere in the coming days.

The debris is part of China’s Long March 5B rocket that recently launched the first module for the country’s new space station.

Emeritus Professor at Western Sydney University, Steven Freeland, told 6PR’s Gareth Parker it is difficult to predict where the debris will land but it’s likely pieces will fall to Earth.  

“Sometimes rockets when they launch satellites up, the rocket continues and ends up in orbit, but quiet often rockets do actually fall back to earth,” he said.

“The idea is that most of it would burn up in atmosphere.”

He said space junk plummeting towards Earth “happens much more commonly than we think”.

“As we send more and more things into space we will increase the risk, not only of collisions in space -which is an absolute disaster, but also things falling back literally on our heads.”

Press PLAY to hear more about the affects of space debris on Earth

(Photo: iStock by Getty Images.)