BEIJING (Reuters) - The remnants of China's Long March 5B rocket are set to re-enter the earth's atmosphere at 10:12 a.m. Beijing time (0212 GMT), plu.
The Chinese agency said early Sunday that the rocket, called the Long March 5B, had re-entered the atmosphere at 10:24 a.m. Beijing time, landing at a location with coordinates of longitude 72.47 degrees east and latitude 2.65 degrees north. That would put the impact location in the Indian Ocean, west of the Maldives archipelago. The vast majority of the device burned up during the reentry, and the landing area of the debris is around a sea area with the center at 2.65 degrees north latitude and 72.47 degrees east longitude, the China Manned Space Engineering Office said in a statement on its website.
U.S. Space Command said in a statement that the Long March 5B had re-entered over the Arabian Peninsula at approximately 10:15 p.m. ET on May 8. It is unknown if the debris impacted land or water, it said.
Chinese rocket segment Long March 5B Yao-2 disintegrates over Indian Ocean: State TV
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Chinese rocket segment Long March 5B Yao-2 disintegrates over Indian Ocean: State TV
AFP / Updated: May 9, 2021, 09:10 IST
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File photo: The Long March-5B Y2 rocket, carrying the core module of China s space station Tianhe, takes off from Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province, China April 29, 2021. (Reuters)
BEIJING: A large segment of a Chinese rocket re-entered the Earth s atmosphere and disintegrated over the Indian Ocean on Sunday, the Chinese space agency said, following fevered speculation over where the 18-tonne object would come down.
Officials in Beijing had said there was little risk from the freefalling segment of the Long March-5B rocket, which had launched the first module of China s new space station into Earth orbit on April 29.