Chinese rocket debris falls into sea again
Source: By The Indian Express
On 4 November 2022, large fragments of China’s Long March 5B rocket plunged uncontrolled into the south central Pacific Ocean, the US Space Command reported in two tweets. The fragments were stages of the rocket used to deliver the third and final module of the Tiangong space station. The rocket had blasted off from southern China four days previously, and broke up during re-entry, European and American space agencies said.
HOW BIG: One of the pieces was left over from the core stage of the rocket that was about 30 metres long and weighed between 17 and 23 tonnes, Western space agencies said. It was “one of the largest pieces of debris re-entering in the near past”, they said, according to a report in The Guardian.
HOW DANGEROUS: Spain’s air navigation authority shut down parts of its airspace for about 40 minutes in view of “the uncontrolled entry of remains from the Chinese space object CZ-5B in a descending orbit crossing our national territory”.
That said, the chances of humans being hit were minuscule, The New York Times reported, quoting an aerospace expert — about 6 per 10 trillion. What was worrying though is the fact that the rocket stage did not by design have a system to ensure it fell in a designated place on Earth. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson had earlier said “it is critical that all spacefaring nations are responsible and transparent…and follow established best practices, especially, for the uncontrolled reentry of a large rocket body debris”.
IT’S HAPPENED EARLIER: this incident was the fourth time something like this had happened with a Chinese rocket. In May 2020, during the rocket’s first deployment, fragments had landed in Ivory Coast, causing some damage to buildings; debris from the second and third flights had plunged into the Indian Ocean and near the Philippines respectively. A rocket of the same design is expected to be used again in 2023.
LOW RISK, SAYS CHINA: Media reports quoted Lijian Zhao, spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, as saying that the “reentry of the last stage of a rocket is an international practice”, and that the Long March 5B rockets are “designed with special technology; most of the components will burn up and be destroyed during the reentry process, and the probability of causing harm to aviation activities and on the ground is extremely low”.
ROCKET & MISSION: China currently relies on the Long March 5B to carry its heaviest payloads to space. The rocket has a big central booster and four smaller boosters on the side, which drop off some time after lift-off. The core booster stage, however, goes to orbit. For the latest mission, the rocket carried Mengtian, a science laboratory module, to Tiangong. The space station is smaller than the International Space Station, but it will establish a more permanent base in space than China’s earlier space stations.
