We don’t want to cast a cloud over your weekend plans - but that shadow overhead might not even be a cloud at all.
A large Chinese rocket, which is widely believed to be out of control travelling at 29,000 kmh, is plunging to Earth as you read this and is expected to crash at some point this weekend.
While this vague time frame is generally agreed on, where it will land remains the million-dollar question.
The Long March rocket will be one of the largest objects to ever make an uncontrolled entry into the Earth’s atmosphere - and experts aren’t sure precisely when or indeed where it will finally make an impact.
For more than a century, the King George County base has been the place where the Navy developed and tested the most powerful weapons used by warships on the high seas.
Naval Support Facility Dahlgren also has recently become home to a small group that keeps its eye on military satellitesâand other objectsâin the sky. Thatâs the 18th Space Control Squadron, Detachment One, which is part of the U.S. Space Force, the sixth branch of the Armed Forces that focuses entirely on the great beyond.
Capt. Todd Copeland, commanding officer at Naval Support Activity South Potomac, recently shared some details about it and other new developments at the base with the King George Board of Supervisors.
Chinese rocket expected to fall to Earth this weekend. Should we be worried?
Updated May 07, 3:51 PM;
Posted May 07, 12:27 PM
In this file photo released by China s Xinhua News Agency, a Long March 5B rocket carrying a module for a Chinese space station lifts off in Wenchang in southern China s Hainan Province on April 29, 2021. The central rocket segment that launched the 22.5-ton core of China s newest space station into orbit is due to plunge back to Earth as early as Saturday, May 8, in an unknown location.AP
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A 100-foot-tall Chinese rocket that some have described as “out of control” is expected to fall down to Earth this weekend. The problem: No one knows exactly when it will happen or where the rocket or big pieces of it will land.
Filed to:18th space control squadron
A Long March 5B rocket, carrying China s Tianhe space station core module, lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Centre in southern China s Hainan province on April 29, 2021. (Photo: STR/AFP, Getty Images)
The U.S. military is tracking an enormous piece of Chinese space debris which is expected to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere sometime around May 8, according to a press release from U.S. Space Command. But as the Pentagon points out, no one knows quite where it will land yet. The space debris in question is formally known as a Long March 5B, the rocket that launched part of China’s Tianhe Space Station into orbit on April 28. As Space News notes, the reentry of this rocket is one of the largest uncontrolled entries in history and there are concerns it could land in an area inhabited by humans.
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The 100-foot-long object is orbiting the blue marble every 90 minutes, passing north of New York and Beijing and as far south as Chile and New Zealand.
While the main stage released the Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony, module – the makings of the country s first permanent space station – shortly after the eight-minute mark of the mission, Gizmodo reported that the core stage stayed in space and did not perform a controlled deorbit.
Although rocket manufacturers typically take precautionary measures to avoid falling rocket debris, Inverse says the Long March 5B rocket stage is built without a steering booster, stabilization system and restartable engine.