Chinese space station burns up over central South Pacific

Whew. Wisconsin just dodged a bullet. A really big bullet.

A 19,000-pound Chinese space station, pieces of which could have crashed in the state, mostly burned up over the central South Pacific on Sunday night.

Wisconsin south of the 43-degree north latitudinal line, which runs from Milwaukee on the east to Prairie du Chien on the west, was part of a high-probability area for impact, according to the European Space Agency.

But the space station was projected to re-enter the Earth's orbit anywhere between 43 degrees north and 43 degrees south latitude, which covers a wide swath of the planet.

The China Manned Space Engineering Office said on its website that the space station, called Tiangong-1, re-entered the atmosphere at 7:15 p.m. central time on Sunday. 

There was no immediate update on whether any of the space station's debris landed on any populated areas, but It was highly unlikely that parts from the space station would have struck anyone. The chance of space debris hitting someone on Earth is less than one in 1 trillion, according to The Aerospace Corp. That compares with a one in 1.4 million chance of being struck by lightning, it said.

Tiangong-1 — or Heavenly Palace 1 — was China's first space station, launched on Sept. 30, 2011.

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The last space station to hit the planet was Russia's MIR, which fell back to Earth on March 23, 2001. The 143-ton space station re-entered Earth's orbit near Fiji, with most of it burning up in the atmosphere and the rest of the pieces falling into the South Pacific.

On July 11, 1979, Skylab, the first U.S. space station, re-entered Earth's atmosphere amid great fanfare, breaking up and scattering debris across parts of western Australia and the Indian Ocean. 

USA TODAY and the Associated Press contributed to this report.