Part of a Chinese Rocket is Expected to Fall to Earth Soon In the next few days, part of a rocket that put a massive section of China's new space station into orbit will fall back to Earth in an uncontrolled descent. There's still a lot of uncertainty about where the debris might land. The Earth's surface is 71 percent water, so it's likelier to land there, but the debris could still fall out of its current orbit onto land, or even a populated place. It's passing over areas as far north as New York and Madrid and south to New Zealand and southern Chile; it could re-enter the atmosphere anywhere in that area.