OUTER ‘JAIL’ SPSPACE

‘JunkJunk’ theft a crime

Don’t go hunt in hunting for souvenir sven i rs Sunday if the plummeting, meting, unman ne unmanned Chinese space station breabreaks up over New York City — because pocketing a piepiece of the fallen space junk could land you in jail.

“According to the Outer Space Treaty oof 1967, a country’ s space cr spacecraft is their legal property ununtil they say that it’s not their llegal property,”erty,” space historianhisto Robertert Z. Pearlman told LiveScience.com. “NNo matter where it lands — whether it lands in the ocean and sinks to the bottom of the sea, or whether it lands on their own land or sosome other country’s land — it belongs to that country of origin.”

Up to 440 poundspoun of mangledgled debris islik likely to survive vive re-entry into the atmosphere, sphere, accord in according to Harvard University astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. Bits and pieces will bbe scatttered over a debris fiefield that coucould be 400 miles llong and 30 miles wide — and the US danger zone, where the remains are most likely to drop, stretches from Northern California all the way to the five boroughs.

But every last scrap belongs to China and keeping any of it is punishable by a fine of $10,000 or up to 10 years in the slammer.

Not only is it illegal, it’s dangerous, too. Most of the wreckage will be red hot when it hits the ground and is likely contaminated with hydrazine, a highly toxic and corrosive chemical.

The latest estimate from the European Space Agency pegs the space station’s reentry at 10 p.m. Eastern time Sunday, give or take seven hours. The unmanned and uncontrollable craft will set off a spectacular series of fireballs as it breaks up in the lower atmosphere.

Your chances of actually being hit with a piece of its shrapnel are vanishingly small: about 1 in 292 trillion, experts estimate.

But it’s not impossible. In 1997 in Tulsa, Okla., it happened to Lettie Williams, who was bonked with a piece of a Delta-2 rocket as she walked in a park.

“It rolled off my shoulder and onto the ground, and it sounded metallic,” Williams told CBS News.