A U.S. federally funded space research and development center expects the wreckage of China’s largest rocket, which occurred last week, to fall back out of the atmosphere Saturday night into early Sunday morning.
China’s Foreign Ministry said Friday that most of the rocket’s debris will burn off on re-entry and is highly unlikely to cause harm. This comes after the U.S. military said NASA was tracking the alleged uncontrolled re-entry.
In a tweet Friday evening, space technology research and development company Aerospace Corporation said its Center for Orbital and Re-entry Debris’ latest forecast for the Long March 5B rocket’s re-entry was 4:19 p.m. GMT Sunday. eight hours before and after.
The center’s latest prediction for the rocket’s re-entry location is near New Zealand’s North Island. However, the center noted that it is likely to land in a large area of the Earth covered by its fallout trajectory.
The launch took off from Hainan on the 29th. The rocket carried the core module of the permanent space station Tianhe. After separating from the rocket, the unmanned Skywarp failed to fall into the ocean as planned for its re-entry orbit.
In a blog post, Aerojet said, “The Long March 5B re-entry was unusual because during the launch, its first stage reached orbital velocity instead of the usual landing range.”
The blog post said, “Empty’s rocket is now in an elliptical orbit around Earth, being towed toward an uncontrolled re-entry.”
Empty’s core stage has been losing altitude since last week, and the rate of its orbital decay remains uncertain due to unpredictable atmospheric variables.
The 18-ton rocket wreckage will be one of the largest pieces of space debris to re-enter the Earth. The core module of the first Long March 5B to return to Earth last year weighed nearly 20 tons, second only to the wreckage of the Columbia space shuttle in 2003, the Soviet Union’s Salyut 7 space station in 1991 and debris from NASA’s Skylab in 1979.
Recent Comments