German space officials may have felt relieved when the ROSAT satellite avoided heavily populated Asian cities by crashing into the South Asia's Bay of Bengal.

A scientist, Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts had earlier pinpointed two Chinese cities with millions of residents each, Chongqing and Chengdu, to be only minutes further northeast along the satellite's projected path.

The German Aerospace Center said that the ROSAT satellite re-entered the atmosphere at 0150 GMT Sunday (9:50 p.m. Saturday EDT) above South Asia's Bay of Bengal which is located between India and Myanmar.

However, no actual reports had been received as to how much of the debris actually reached the sea's surface, the space center said.

The 2.4 metric tons German satellite was launched in 1990 and was retired in 1999 after being used for research on black holes and neutron stars.

While most of the 21-year-old satellite may have burn as it hit the atmosphere, up to 30 fragments weighing a total of 1.87 tons (1.7 metric tons) may have re-entered the Earth.