A defunct satellite has entered the atmosphere but there is no information yet on whether any of its pieces have crashed into Earth, Germany’s Aerospace Centre said.
The Roentgen Satellite (Rosat) re-entered the Earth's atmosphere between 1.45am and 2.15am.
Agency spokesman Andreas Schuetz said scientists are no longer able to communicate with the dead satellite and it must have travelled about 20,000km in the ast 30 minutes before entering the atmosphere.
Experts are now waiting for "observations from around the world".
Most parts of the car-sized satellite have been expected to burn up during re-entry, but up to 30 fragments could crash into Earth at speeds of over 400km/h.
There is a one-in-2,000 chance a piece might hit somebody. As there are 7 billion people on the planet, this equates to odds of 14,000,000,000-1 that any one individual be hit.
AP