A massive rocket body is flying uncontrollably around our planet and could crash back to Earth in the coming days.
This approximately 21-ton object is the core stage of China’s Long March 5B rocket. On April 29, China launched the first module of a new space station that the country is constructing. Instead of falling into a pre-designated location in the ocean—a common practice for discarded rocket parts—the core stage of the Long March 5B is orbiting the planet uncontrollably.
Andrew Jones, who covers China’s space program, shared with SpaceNews that the rocket body is likely to fall back to Earth in the coming days.
“I think that under current standards, it is unacceptable to let it re-enter uncontrollably,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer who tracks objects orbiting Earth. “Since 1990, nothing heavier than 10 tons has been intentionally left in orbit to re-enter uncontrollably.”
The rocket part is about 30 meters long and nearly 5 meters wide, according to Jones. As it re-enters orbit, it may burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, but large debris could still survive. The majority of our planet is ocean, so that’s where rocket debris is most likely to land. But it could still pose a threat to populated areas.
“It is always difficult to assess the mass and number of surviving fragments without knowing the design of the object, but a ‘general guideline’ is roughly 20-40% of the original dry mass,” said Holger Krag, head of the Space Safety Programme Office at the European Space Agency.
According to Jones, the rocket’s path around Earth takes it “a bit further north than New York, Madrid, and Beijing and as far south as Chile and Wellington, New Zealand.” In general, it could fall back to Earth anywhere within this range.
China previously launched the Long March 5B rocket in May 2020 to test it by sending a prototype spacecraft into orbit. The core stage of that rocket also fell back to Earth uncontrollably, about 6 days after launch. It re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean, according to the U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron. However, local reports indicated that debris from the rocket fell in Côte d’Ivoire.
Jim Bridenstine, who was NASA Administrator at the time, called it “really dangerous.” The rocket’s path took it over Los Angeles and New York City just before it succumbed to Earth’s gravity.
According to Andrew Jones, the Long March 5B is specifically designed to launch space station modules. China plans to build the new space station with 11 launches by the end of 2022. It remains unclear how the Chinese government plans to handle the rocket bodies in the next 10 launches.
“The core of the Long March 5B is seven times larger than the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket,” McDowell shared.
In the past, a pressure tank from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket landed on a farm in Washington and left a 10 cm deep dent in the ground. No one was injured in that incident, according to local authorities.
An earlier prototype of the space station that China is building also fell back to Earth uncontrollably in 2018. It landed in the South Pacific Ocean, an uninhabited area.
Source BI