Chinese rocket expected to crash on to Earth this weekend
It is not clear where and when precisely the rocket parts will crash on the surface.
The Long March 5B rocket was launched in late April to hold the primary module of China's future space platform into orbit.
The body of the rocket is currently circling Earth, close to enter the lower atmosphere.
The US on Thursday said it had been watching the trail of the thing but currently had no plans to shoot it down.
"We're hopeful that it'll land during a place where it won't harm anyone," US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said. "Hopefully within the ocean, or someplace like that."
He also indirectly criticised China, saying there was a requirement to "make sure that we take those sorts of things into consideration as we plan and conduct operations".
Chinese state media has over the past days played down fears the rocket might crash on inhabited land, suggesting it'll fall somewhere in high sea .
The Global Times quoted aerospace expert Song Zhongping who added that China's space monitoring network would keep an in depth watch and take necessary measures should damage occur.
What will happen to the rocket?
The rocket is currently during a low orbit, which suggests it circles round the Earth but remains gradually pulled down.
"Drag will slow the thing causing loss of altitude, bringing it down into denser atmosphere, which successively causes more drag and further loss of velocity and altitude," Jason Herrin of the world Observatory Singapore, told the BBC.
"Once this process starts, the thing are going to be locked into an irreversible downward journey," he explains.
The rocket is predicted to largely spend because the atmosphere gets more and more dense at about 60km altitude from the surface. The parts that do not spend completely will remain and fall to Earth.
If all this happens uncontrolled, the place where the rocket burns up and where the debris will fall are often neither controlled nor accurately predicted.
A previous launch of another Long March 5B in 2020 also saw the body re-enter in an uncontrolled way, with some debris crashing during a rural a part of Ivory Coast .
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China's space agency has not made any discuss whether the rocket is being controlled, or if it'll make an uncontrolled descent, say reports.
'Hoping they get lucky'
Astronomer Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said the difficulty of a uncontrolled re-entry is one that's "only an enormous problem with the Long March 5B".
"Small US and European upper stages also re-enter uncontrolled (and spend entirely) but the large US or European rockets are specially designed to not leave big stages in orbit; they're always safely disposed of on the primary orbit of the flight," he told the BBC.
"China decided they might rather use an easier design and hope that they get lucky with the stage re-entering uncontrolled but not hurting anyone."
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