On April 29, 2021, the wreckage of a Long March 5B rocket that lifted off from the Wenchang Space Launch Complex in southern China’s Hainan Province will fall to Earth in an “uncontrolled” state in the coming days.
The uncontrolled crash of the Chinese Long March 5B remote 2 rocket into the region has raised public concern. The latest U.S. prediction is that the rocket wreckage could land on the evening of the 8th or morning of the 9th UTC, but there is still a margin of error. Meanwhile, the scientific and political communities continue to criticize the Chinese Communist Party for letting the rocket fall as an irresponsible act.
Citing U.S. military forecasts, the Free Times reports that the Long March rocket wreckage will likely hit the ground at 2300 UTC on the 8th, with a margin of error of plus or minus 9 hours.
The latest forecast from the Center for Orbital and Reentry Studies of the American Aerospace Corporation points out that the rocket will return to Earth at 4:19 UTC on the 9th, with a margin of error of plus or minus 8 hours. The location of the rocket wreckage re-entering the atmosphere should be in the area near the North Island of New Zealand, but stressed that the path is still highly variable.
The expected orbital inclination of the rocket wreckage is 41.5 degrees, which means that areas as far north as Chicago, New York, Rome and Beijing, and as far south as New Zealand and Chile, are in the path of the wreckage back to Earth.
Scientists expect most of the wreckage to burn up and be destroyed in the atmosphere, but some will still land in various locations on Earth, including some metal and glass that was not burned. Debris falling at high speeds could potentially endanger humans or buildings.
Jonathan Black, director of the Aerospace and Ocean Systems Laboratory at Virginia Tech, told the Voice of America that the burning and incomplete parts of the rocket would also produce toxic pollution.
Some scientists have criticized the Communist Party for allowing spacecraft wreckage to return to Earth unchecked and irresponsibly.
Paulo Lozano, director of MIT’s Space Propulsion Lab, said the Chinese Communist Party certainly bears responsibility for not providing enough information and designing ways to prevent the spacecraft’s uncontrolled return to Earth.
Almost all U.S. rockets are designed with specialized engines to guide them back to a designated unoccupied area on Earth after completing their missions, Lozano said, adding that one has never heard of a U.S. rocket returning uncontrollably to an inexact location on Earth.
Scientists speculate that the high price may also be the reason why the CCP rocket did not adopt the relevant design.
Jim Cooper, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, which oversees the U.S. space program, said the Chinese Communist Party has repeatedly and blatantly disregarded space safety, this time without even predicting where the rocket would land or providing any protection for people in a crash trajectory.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said that for the past 30 years, only the Chinese Communist Party has allowed rocket debris to fall to Earth at will.
In May 2020, the wreckage of another Long March 5B rocket from the Chinese Communist Party also returned to Earth in an uncontrolled manner, with some wreckage destroying villages in the Ivory Coast of West Africa.
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