Out-of-control Chinese rocket re-enters earth, disintegrates over THIS place
Earlier, China had claimed that there was not much risk from the freefalling segment of the Long March-5B rocket.
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Updated: May 9, 2021, 09:51 AM IST
The Chinese space agency on Sunday (May 9) announced that a large segment of a Chinese rocket re-entered the atmosphere of the Earth and disintegrated over the Indian Ocean. The news has come as a relief for many as speculations were rife over where the 18-tonne object would come down.
Earlier, China had claimed that there was not much risk from the freefalling segment of the Long March-5B rocket, which was used to launch the first module of China s new space station into the orbit of Earth on April 29.
Debris from the Long March 5B has had some people looking warily skyward since shortly after it blasted off from China s Hainan island on April 29.
The Long March launched last week was the second deployment of the 5B variant since its maiden flight in May 2020. Last year, pieces from the first Long March 5B fell on Ivory Coast, damaging several buildings. No injuries were reported.
With most of the Earth s surface covered by water, the odds of populated area on land being hit had been low, and the likelihood of injuries even lower, according to experts.
But uncertainty over the rocket s orbital decay and China s failure to issue stronger reassurances in the run-up to the re-entry fuelled anxiety.
Plummeting Chinese rocket burns up over ocean
2021-05-09 HKT 11:39
The Long March rocket blasts off from Hainan Province last month. File photo: AP A large segment of a Chinese rocket re-entered the Earth s atmosphere and disintegrated over the Indian Ocean on Sunday, the national 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. After monitoring and analysis, at 10.24 am on May 9, 2021, the last-stage wreckage of the Long March 5B Yao-2 launch vehicle has reentered the atmosphere, the China Manned Space Engineering Office said in a statement, providing coordinates for a point in the Indian Ocean near the Maldives.
China s Long March-5B rocket could fall out of orbit, analyst says
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The Long March-5B rocket, carrying China s Tianhe space station core module, lifted off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan Province, China, on Thursday. File Photo by Matjaz Tancic/EPA-EFE
May 4 (UPI) A U.S. astrophysicist is raising concerns about a Chinese carrier rocket used last week to launch the main module of a space station, as the rocket s core could be falling out of the Earth s orbit.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Astrophysics Center at Harvard University, said it is possible some parts of the rocket will survive re-entry and cause damage on land, The Guardian reported Tuesday.