China launched the Long March 5B remote 2 launch vehicle in late April and carried China’s first space station’s “Tianhe core module,” but it went out of control and drifted out of orbit; the U.S. Department of Defense expects the rocket to crash at an unknown location as soon as the 8th; White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on the 5th that the U.S. Space Command (US White House spokesman Jen Psaki said on 5, the U.S. Space Command (US Space Command) is continuing to track its location; the Chinese side did not respond.
Experts worry about landing in inhabited areas
Usually the rocket’s core section or the first section will enter the atmosphere again soon after liftoff, and will not enter orbit like the core section of Long March 5B Yaoji; the China National Space Administration has not yet stated whether the rocket’s core section is under control, and it is not clear whether it will fall out of control.
It is still unclear what the basic details of the rocket’s launch and trajectory are, as the Chinese government has not publicly explained how the rocket will return to Earth; media calls to the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on May 5 were not returned.
However, China’s Global Times reported that the rocket’s thin aluminum outer layer could be easily burned by the atmosphere, posing an “extremely remote” risk to the population, meaning that it would have minimal impact on the general public.
Location to be determined after re-entry into the atmosphere
The Department of Defense predicted in a statement on the 4th that the Chinese rocket is expected to fall to Earth on the 8th, but the location will not be determined until it returns to the atmosphere in a few hours.
Sharkey noted on the 5th that U.S. Space Command continues to track the rocket’s location, “due to the increasing frequency of space debris and activity, the United States continues to work to address the risk of space congestion; we hope to work with the international community to promote leadership and responsible behavior in space.”
The nonprofit Aerospace Corp. predicts that debris from the rocket will fly through eastern U.S. cities before landing close to the Pacific equator; the rocket’s debris trajectory spans the long belt from New Zealand to Newfoundland, Canada.
The Long March 5B remote rocket, which carried the Tianhe core module into orbit on April 29, had a rocket section about 100 feet long, making it one of the largest pieces of space debris to ever fall to Earth; China intends to launch a dozen more rockets and carry other parts of the Tianhe space station.
The debris is like a small plane crash
Jonathan McDowell, a scholar at Harvard University’s Center for Astrophysics, predicted that some of the rocket debris will not be burned up when it returns to Earth, and that the debris will spread 100 miles, like a small plane crash.
This is not the first time a Chinese rocket has fallen out of control, as another Chinese rocket also fell out of control last May, crashing into the Atlantic Ocean off West Africa.
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