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China: uncontrolled return of a rocket, minimal risks to Earth

A piece of Chinese rocket may crash on Earth, or more likely in the ocean, by this weekend. This is a stage of the Long March 5B rocket, launched in April by Beijing, which plans to install its own space station around the Moon by the end of 2022. This section should make an uncontrolled re-entry into the earth atmosphere, but it is not clear where exactly. The United States has expressed concerns and the Chinese authorities have reassured everyone. “The probability of causing damage […] on the ground is extremely weak, ”a spokesperson for Chinese diplomacy, Wang Wenbin, told the press.

“Due to the technical design of this rocket, the majority of the components will be burnt and destroyed upon re-entry into the atmosphere,” said Wang Wenbin. After the separation of the space module, the launcher began to orbit the planet in an irregular trajectory, slowly losing altitude, making any prediction of its point of entry into the atmosphere almost impossible. .

Debris should spoil at sea

If it remains intact after entering the atmosphere, there is a good chance that the rocket will crash into the sea, because the planet is 70% water. But it could also crash into an inhabited area or onto a ship. Hence the concerns of the Americans who are monitoring the situation closely.

This is not the first time that China has lost control of a space object upon returning to Earth. In April 2018, the Tiangong-1 space laboratory disintegrated on re-entry into the atmosphere, two years after it ceased to function. The Chinese authorities had denied that the laboratory had escaped their control.


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