A British newspaper reports a huge area of Beijing could have been destroyed last year, as it was directly in the flight path of a two-decade-old satellite.

The Daily Mail’s online edition said on Tuesday the defunct German research satellite Rosat, launched in 1990, was falling directly toward Beijing last October.

But the Chinese capital avoided the catastrophe by a narrow margin of seven minutes, as friction slowed down the satellite when it reentered the atmosphere. The satellite burned up and was torn to pieces before plunging into the Bay of Bengal.

The European Space Agency said the space junk was falling toward the earth at nearly 483 kilometers per hour and was perilously close to hitting Beijing. It added that scientists had no way of controlling the satellite when it went out of commission kilometers above the earth.