The U.S. media reports that the Long March 5B remote 2 launch vehicle is crashing in an uncontrolled manner after its launch.
A few days ago, the Chinese Communist Party launched the Long March 5B Yao-2 launch vehicle, carrying the core module of the space station Tianhe to liftoff. But space experts warned that after the rocket’s launch, the booster did not crash at the designated ocean point, but rather rotated around the Earth in an uncontrolled manner, and that the rocket’s 21-ton second-segment booster could crash to Earth in a few days, with the wreckage feared to land in a residential area.
According to the U.S. media website SpaceNews, the Long March 5B rocket carrying the core module of China’s Tiangong space station called “Tianhe” was launched on April 29, and 10 minutes after the launch, the core module separated from the rocket and soon after “Tianhe” entered the scheduled orbit. But after reaching orbit, the core thruster of the Long March 5B rocket is returning to Earth in an “unpredictable” and uncontrolled manner.
Ground-based radars used by the U.S. military to track spacecraft and other objects in space have detected that the rocket has not crashed at the designated oceanic point after launch, and that the rocket’s core section, “2021-035B,” which is about 30 meters long and 5 meters wide, is currently orbiting the Earth at an uncontrolled speed of 7 kilometers per second.
The U.S. military detected that the rocket’s core section is flashing regularly, indicating that it is tumbling, which also means that the core section is already in an uncontrolled state.
The report said it is impossible to predict when and where the rocket’s core section will crash to Earth. The rocket is moving at a very high speed, orbiting the Earth almost every 90 minutes, and with each minute change, the core section will fall thousands of kilometers away from where it fell.
The reports speculate that the core node could have crashed in the ocean or in an uninhabited area, but it could also have crashed in a residential area, all of which is impossible to speculate.
Jonathan McDowell, a spacecraft observer, said the Long March 5B Yaoji launch vehicle was the largest uncontrolled object to fall to Earth in decades. He had hoped that China (altogether) would keep the core section contained in orbit after it detached from the capsule, but that was not the case.
Space experts predicted that the rocket would re-enter the atmosphere around 1:30 a.m. on May 11, possibly crashing in the area off West Africa. However, atmospheric drag and changes in solar activity could affect the time of re-entry, and a one-minute deviation in time would change the location of the debris fall by about 500 kilometers.
By then, the rocket’s debris will fall as far north as New York, Madrid and Beijing, and as far south as Chile and Wellington, New Zealand, and it is feared that some debris will fall in residential areas.
A year ago, the Long March 5B launcher also launched a manned capsule similar to Dragon 2 for testing on May 5, 2020, but the large 18-ton rocket suffered an anomaly during its return.
After orbiting the Earth, the rocket’s core collided with the atmosphere and entered the atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner on May 11. The U.S. Department of Defense issued an update on the same day, saying that the wreckage of the rocket, which did not burn completely after passing through the atmosphere, fell into the Atlantic Ocean near the coast of West Africa.
“Long March 5” rocket has been in 2016, 2017 and 2019 to carry out the launch mission, the outside world that the first 2 launches were only half successful, the third launch was successful.
Recent Comments