"Not an everyday occurrence"

Spectacle: space debris flies over Carinthia

Unusual lights and sounds could fill the Carinthian sky from Friday afternoon. Debris from the ISS space station will fly over parts of the province.

The space debris is a jettisoned battery pack that may enter the Earth's atmosphere, according to the German Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance. "The total of nine batteries were already detached from the ISS on January 11, 2021 and thus subjected to an uncontrolled re-entry," according to the European Space Agency (ESA). This could result in "luminous phenomena or the perception of a sonic boom" between Friday afternoon and Saturday noon.

Impact on Earth "extremely unlikely"
However, it is "extremely unlikely" that parts of the platform, which is about the size of a car and weighs 2.6 tons, will hit the Earth. Experts assume that the batteries will burn up completely when they enter the atmosphere. Carinthia will be affected on Friday to the south-east from around 4.20 p.m. to around 4.50 p.m. and to the south-west from around 8.55 p.m. to around 9.25 p.m. 

"Forecasts of the time and place of re-entry are naturally associated with great uncertainties in such cases, mainly due to the poorly predictable atmospheric resistance," explains the ESA. The state of Carinthia is in ongoing contact with the federal states of Tyrol and Vorarlberg - they are also in the flyover path. This is a normal occurrence for space travel, but not an everyday one.