Officials have assured residents that the risk of debris from a defunct satellite falling on Italy is now nil, scrubbing an earlier warning of "minimal" danger.
"The Italian Space Agency has excluded any impact of fragments from the satellite on Italian territory," the Civil Protection service said in a statement on Sunday.
The declaration superseded a warning it issued earlier saying it was "not yet possible to exclude the possibility, even minimal, that one or several fragments could fall on Italy" late on Sunday or early Monday.
The European Space Agency says the Gravity Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) research satellite will re-enter the atmosphere sometime Sunday night.
While most of it would disintegrate, a 200kg fragment the mass of a car engine will survive, breaking up into smaller debris that would hit the Earth's surface.
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It is still unclear where the pieces will land.
Experts say the statistical risk of humans being hit is remote.
The GOCE low-orbit research satellite was launched in 2009 to monitor gravity variations and sea levels. It ran out of fuel on October 21 after performing for twice as long as originally predicted.
It will start to disintegrate when it descends into the mesosphere, at an altitude of around 80km.
The GOCE was built before the implementation of a 2008 international accord requiring research satellites re-entering the atmosphere at the end of their life span to burn up completely or have a controlled re-entry far from human habitation.
