The largest section of the massive Long March 5B rocket that launched the main module of what will be China’s first permanent space station ( expected to be fully operational by 2022 ), returns to Earth on Saturday at an unknown location. . This is so because, although the discarded rocket stages are immediately guided to a friction-controlled demolition in the Earth’s atmosphere, this was unfortunately not the case in this case.
China’s space agency stated that the rocket that sent the module into low Earth orbit entered a temporary orbit, meaning it will make one of the largest uncontrolled reentries of a space machine.
The European Space Agency, for its part, has stated that the rocket is likely to fall back to Earth on May 8 or 9 at approximately 17:23 UTC, although they say there is a margin of error of about a day.
At the moment, the runaway rocket is orbiting Earth roughly once every 90 minutes traveling at 27,600 kilometers / hour and at an altitude of more than 300 kilometers, an orbit that is rapidly decaying.
Where will it fall?
This giant chunk of space junk is 30 meters long and 5 meters wide; weighs 21 metric tons. At the current rate of travel around the Earth, the rocket stage should re-enter the atmosphere sometime on May 8, but it could also be May 7 or even 9, and possibly scatter the debris across the Ocean. Pacific, unless it’s the Atlantic Ocean or Europe or Russia or Africa or some other place for now undetermined … it could fall into an inhabited area, just like it already happened with the debris from a previous Long March 5B rocket that damaged a village in the Ivory Coast in May last year. Fortunately, no one was injured.
Currently daily updates on its location are being published on the Pentagon’s Space Track application, but as US Department of Defense spokesman Mike Howard recalled the “exact point of entry into Earth’s atmosphere” of the rocket You will not be able to identify yourself for a few hours, when your re-entry occurs. Howard, in fact, points out that he expects it to fall on the Pacific, purely for the surface area covered by this ocean.
Although there has been no official announcement from the China National Space Administration on the maneuvers, the South China Morning Post reports that Chinese authorities are tracking the projectile and predicting that most of it will burn on reentry and what will not. do will fall into international waters.
The most likely scenario is that the wreckage falls into the sea without causing damage of any kind. The chances of someone being hit by a piece of space debris are one in a trillion, so it’s pretty slim.
Tianhe was launched on Thursday, April 29 from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan, China, on the Long March 5B, China’s largest rocket and is expected by the end of 2022 with 11 new launches, the space station china is ready to be operational.
