The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has warned that the remains of a Chinese rocket, launched this Sunday, July 24, may fall on European territory this weekend.
Experts from the European Union Satellite Surveillance and Tracking Service (SST) have estimated that the foreseeable thing is that the remains of the rocket will fall the next sunday july 31 around 2:24 a.m. (1:24 a.m. in the Canary Islands) in an area still unconfirmed, but they establish a margin of error of 16 hours ahead and behind.
According to Space, most of the rocket will burn up before entering the Earth’s atmosphere, but a part of it may make landfall. It is estimated that they may be parts of the propellant, which may weigh between five and ten tonswhich can end up hitting the ground.
The Chinese Long March 5B rocket
However, we must remain calm, since the probability that these remains could affect someone is very low. Specifically, there is only six chances out of 10 billion of it happening 75% of the planet’s surface that is in the potential path of the rocket to Earth is water, desert or jungle, so the most normal thing is that nobody is affected by the impact of these remains on our planet.
There’s a “99,5% chance of nothing happening,” Ted Muelhaupt, a consultant with The Aerospace Corporation’s Office of the Chief Corporate Engineer, said during a discussion of the upcoming Long March 5B accident. “Personally, if this came to my mind, I would run out with a camera to see it, because I think it would be more of a [oportunidad] visual than a real risk,” he added.
“The worst case scenario in this event is going to be less severe than a single cruise missile attack that we’ve been seeing every day in the Ukraine war, so let’s put it into some perspective here,” said astrophysicist and tracker of satellites Jonathan McDowell.
Nonetheless, the upcoming Long March 5B crash is a serious and unfortunate event, McDowell and others stressed, particularly because it could have been prevented.