Uncontrolled debris from a Chinese rocket could return to Earth on Saturday. Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded space research center that monitors orbital debris re-entry.
China launched a new laboratory module Wentian called for the Tiangong space station from Hainan Island in the South China Sea earlier this week. The rocket carrying the module, the Long March 5B, will make an uncontrolled re-entry.
This is not the first time that rocket debris from China’s space program has fallen into the atmosphere under suspicious circumstances.
In May 2021 the world watched in uncertainty as it tried to determine the whereabouts of the remains of a missile of the same class Those carrying the initial module for the Tiangong space station will crash.
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After days of intense monitoring by scientists and various agencies, including the US Space Command, the missile re-entered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.
Now the replica situation is approaching.
China’s largest rocket, measuring approximately 175 feet and weighing 23 metric tons. According to the Aerospace Corporation. It’s too early to say exactly where he will land.
The US Space Command said in a statement that last year’s rocket may have had a re-entry site “should not be cleared for several hours after re-login.” An agency A spokeswoman told CNN that it is monitoring the space junk that will take place this week.
But experts stress that the risk to people and the United States in general is extremely low.
“We estimate that only 3% of the surface path is over the United States,” said Lael Woods, director of the Aerospace Corporation.
According to Marlon Sorgen, director of the Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Orbital and Re-Landing Debris Research, in general, space agencies try to guide the reentry of rockets to a certain extent to ensure that they land safely.
If an object has a 1 in 10,000 chance of impacting an area where it could harm someone, NASA will try to control its re-entry, Sorge told USA TODAY.
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“It’s basically a low-risk thing, but it’s much higher than it should be. That’s 10 times higher than our limits,” Ted Muelhaupt, a reentry debris expert with the Aerospace Corporation, told USA TODAY on Wednesday.
“But the fact that we’re having this conversation; that people are watching it … watching it … is unnecessary. Even if nothing happens, it comes at the cost of people being prepared that something is going to happen.”
NASA has rebuked China’s Space Agency in the past for allowing unsupervised re-entries.
“It is clear that China is not meeting responsible standards for its space debris” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement after last year’s rocket debris reentry.
Credit: Associated Press
