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The remains of a giant segment of a Chinese rocket landed in the Atlantic Ocean this week, representing the most significant uncontrolled descent of a piece of man-made space debris in decades.
The core stage of a Chinese Long March 5B (CZ-5B) rocket, which successfully launched on May 5, spent several days in orbit as part of its mission, before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere and falling to the earth, splashing in oceanic waters off the west coast of Mauritania in northwest Africa.
The descent, which was finally confirmed by the 18th Space Control Squadron, a unit of the US Air Force. In the US, it was noted not only for its massive mass, but also for the extent of the uncontrolled descent window, which had space object trackers guessing where and when the control rocket would eventually land.
“At 17.8 tons, it is the most massive object to make an uncontrolled reentry from the 39-ton Salyut-7 in 1991, unless OV-102 Columbia counted in 2003.” tweeted Astronomer Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
While the CZ-5B rocket rocket might not have been controlled, it was not unplanned. Throughout history, space launches have involved large numbers of spacecraft and components re-entering Earth’s atmosphere as debris, sometimes in controlled or partially controlled maneuvers, but often in uncontrolled descents.
Still, McDowell says the CZ-5B crash was an unusual event. “I’ve never seen a major reentry go straight through so many major conurbations!” he tweeted.
Fortunately, the 30-meter-long (98-foot) parts of the central stage that did not burn during re-entry also did not end up falling on inhabited land. This was considered a vague possibility, as observers guess the wreckage of the rocket could land in Australia, USA. USA Or Africa.
Updated SpaceTrack reentry forecast for CZ-5B core stage: between 1330 UTC and 1730 UTC on May 11. The orbit is 139 x 162 km. Possible re-entry zones include Australia, USA. USA, Africa and many oceans. pic.twitter.com/0kkNsaHfH1
– Jonathan McDowell (@ planet4589) May 11, 2020
While such an eventuality could almost certainly involve loss of life, such an incident is generally considered improbable given the amount of Earth’s surface that constitutes uninhabited ocean land. In any case, McDowell minimizes the dangers.
“For a large object like this, dense pieces like parts of rocket engines could survive reentry and crash into Earth,” McDowell told CNN.
“Once they reach the lower atmosphere, they travel relatively slowly, so the worst case scenario is that they can get a house out.”
The CZ-5B launched last week to transport an experimental prototype spacecraft to orbit, called the Chinese next-generation manned spacecraft, which successfully landed on Earth after a couple of days of orbiting testing.
“The successful landing of the new spacecraft from high orbit also shows that China is serious about sending astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, something only NASA has accomplished, and ultimately sending its astronauts to the Moon. “Andrew Jones, a reporter for SpaceNews, told AFP.
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