The wreckage of China’s largest rocket crashed into the Indian Ocean on Sunday (May 9), destroying most of its parts as it re-entered the atmosphere, ending speculation about where the debris hit, but drawing U.S. criticism for a lack of transparency.
Chinese official media, citing coordinates from the Chinese Manned Space Program Office, placed the impact point in the Indian Ocean west of the Maldives Islands.
The wreckage of the Long March 5B has kept some watching the skies warily since it lifted off from China’s Hainan Island on April 29, but the Chinese Manned Space Engineering Office says most of the debris has burned off in the atmosphere.
Official media reported that part of the rocket re-entered the atmosphere at 10:24 a.m. Beijing time (0224 GMT) and crashed at the coordinates of 72.47 degrees east longitude and 2.65 degrees north latitude.
U.S. Space Command confirmed the rocket had re-entered the Arabian Peninsula, but said it was inconclusive whether the debris impacted land or water.
Space Command posted a statement on its website saying the rocket debris “The exact location of the impact and the extent of the debris is unknown at this time.”
The Long March 5B is the second deployment since its first launch liftoff in May 2020. Last year, debris from the inaugural Long March 5B landed in Ivory Coast, damaging several buildings, but no injuries were reported.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a former U.S. senator, is also a former astronaut. Nelson was appointed NASA Administrator in March of this year.
Nelson said, “It is clear that China has not met the standards of responsibility regarding its space debris.”
Anxiety over potential debris fallout areas
Because much of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, the chances of a strike on densely populated areas are low and the likelihood of injury even lower, experts say.
But uncertainty about the rocket’s decaying orbit and China’s failure to issue stronger assurances before returning to flight have fueled the apprehension.
The Reuters report cited analysis by astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who said the rocket debris impact area could be as far north as New York, Madrid or Beijing, and as far south as southern Chile and Wellington, New Zealand.
McDowell said most countries have sought to avoid such uncontrolled re-entries through their spacecraft designs since most of NASA’s Skylab crashed from orbit and landed in Australia in July 1979.
McDowell said, “It makes the Chinese rocket designers look lazy. They haven’t solved the problem.”
The Global Times, owned by China’s official media People’s Daily, dismissed fears that the rocket was out of control and could cause damage as “Western hype.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular press conference on May 7: “It is a worldwide practice that the upper rocket will burn when it re-enters the atmosphere.”
Wang Wenbin said, “As far as I know, the upper layer of this rocket has been deactivated, which means that most of its parts will burn off on re-entry, making the possibility of damaging aviation or ground facilities and activities extremely low.” .
The rocket will be launched into orbit, which sends an unoccupied Tianhe module into orbit. The module contains what will become the habitation compartment for the three crew members on the permanent Chinese space station.
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