The timing and crash site of the Communist Party of China’s Long March 5B rocket, which went off course uncontrollably, has sparked global concern. The U.S. federally funded Center for Space Research and Development expects the wreckage of the largest rocket launched by the Chinese Communist Party last week to fall through the atmosphere late Saturday (May 8) and early Sunday.
In a Friday evening tweet, the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit that conducts research and analysis funded primarily by the federal government, said its Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (CORDS) latest prediction for the Long March 5B rocket’s re-entry is 8 hours before and after 4:19 p.m. GMT Sunday.
CORDS’ latest prediction for the rocket’s re-entry location is near New Zealand’s North Island. However, the center notes that re-entry is possible anywhere in the large area of the globe covered by its path.
European Space Agency predicts risk zone
The European Space Agency predicts a “risk zone” that includes any part of the Earth’s surface between 41.5 degrees north and 41.5 degrees south latitude. This includes almost all of the U.S. south of New York, all of Africa and Australia, parts of Asia south of Japan, and Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece in Europe.
On April 29, a Long March 5B rocket carried the core module of the permanent space station Tianhe. After separating from the rocket unmanned, the Tianhe failed to fall into the ocean as planned for reentry.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, previously told Reuters that it was possible debris from the rocket could have landed on land, perhaps in a residential area, as it did in May 2020, when debris from the first Long March 5B landed in the Ivory Coast, damaging several buildings, though no casualties were reported.
The empty rocket is now in an elliptical orbit around Earth, making a runaway re-entry, American Aerospace wrote in a blog post.
The Communist Party’s Foreign Ministry said Friday (May 7) that most of the rocket’s debris will be ablated and destroyed on re-entry and is highly unlikely to cause harm. Earlier, the U.S. military said the U.S. Space Command was tracking the Long March 5B’s “uncontrolled re-entry.
What experts say about the risk of a crash
The BBC reports that astrophysicist Andrew Jones recently wrote on the spacenews website that the main body of the Long March 5B launcher orbits the Earth about once every 90 minutes and that it is impossible to determine exactly when it will enter the atmosphere.
“The most likely scenario is that it is not melted by the high temperatures generated on its return to the atmosphere and lands in the ocean or an uninhabited area, but there is also a risk of damage to humans or property,” Jones said.
Professor Moriba Jah, an aerospace engineer at the University of Texas, said space debris is “as small as a smartphone and as big as a space station.” He was involved in designing a map called AstriaGraph, which tracks all the man-made objects in space, some 26,000 of them.
“The satellites that provide services like positioning, navigation and timing, financial transactions, weather warnings, etc., could be hit by this junk debris at any time and then stop working. The loss of these space resources could have a major impact on humanity.” Professor Yeh said.
McDowell told CNN this week that the risk that a Long March 5B crash will do some damage or hit someone is fairly small, not negligible, it could happen, but the risk that it will hit you is incredibly small. In terms of the size of the personal threat, he’s not going to have trouble sleeping over this.
The New York Times says more launches of the Long March 5B rocket are coming, and unless the Chinese Communist Party changes its mode of operation, the likelihood of someone being hurt by booster debris will increase.
The risk to individuals is minimal,” said Ted J. Muelhaupt, director of the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Research at American Aerospace. But the risk to everyone is not.”
Last year, the Long March 5B rocket carried a prototype of a Chinese manned space capsule on its first launch. The rocket’s booster also suffered a runaway re-entry, and some debris rained down on a village in Ivory Coast.
That drew a rebuke from then-NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
“It could have been very dangerous,” he said, “and considering that it didn’t seem to hurt anyone, we can say we were extremely lucky.”
Recent Comments