Space junk weighing 23 tons will fall to Earth – What scientists say

Like Russian roulette, a large piece of Chinese space junk, weighing 23 tons and the height of a 10-story building, a part of a Long March 5B rocket, is spinning around the Earth. The way it will fall is uncontrollable, the fall will happen today or Saturday and no one yet knows exactly where it will happen.

THE missile is the one that launched the third and final segment of China’s new Tiangong space station on October 31. As with previous launches of the same heavy-lift rocket, China’s space agency did not conduct a controlled descent of the remaining portion of the rocket after it released its payload.

Although much of the rocket will burn up in the atmosphere by the time it reaches Earth, some of it will eventually -20% to 40% – is expected to fall into it, possibly into the sea which covers 70% of our planet. It is estimated that about 88% of the world’s population lives in the areas of possible fall, but experts nevertheless pointed out that the chances of someone being hit by the huge piece of junk are only six in 10 trillion.

In July this year a Long March 5B missile part weighing 5.5 to 10 tons had crashed in the Indian Ocean, in April 2021 something similar had happened in the same ocean, while in 2020 parts of the missile had fallen somewhere in West Africa. Although no casualties or fatalities have been reported so far from such incidents, the voices of those calling for the establishment of international regulations or even laws to prevent such incidents are gradually increasingwhich also come from other countries with a space program, reports the APE-MPE publication, citing the New York Times and Space.com.