Security agencies and surveillance services around the world, including spainthey have been pending again where the remains of a Chinese rocket would fall; this time it was the Long March 5B, with an estimated mass of about 20 tons and traveling without control at a speed of 28,000 kilometers per hour.
After many predictions, the remains of the rocket have fallen at 18:50 Spanish time (16:50 GMT) in the indian oceanafter an uncontrolled re-entry into the atmosphere.
#China:The debris of the upper stage of the Long March 5B Y3 rocket (#CZ5B) has re-entered the atmosphere in #Sulu sea around 119.0°E, 9.1°N, and most of the components have been burnt out during re-entry. pic.twitter.com/StX0QDmYiA https://t.co/WgrJXtD7dX
— Wᵒˡᵛᵉʳᶤᶰᵉ Uᵖᵈᵃᵗᵉˢ???? (@W0lverineupdate) July 30, 2022
Debris from Chinese rocket lit up night sky some parts of Malaysia. US space command confirm the development China’s Long March 5B (CZ-5B) re-entered over the Indian Ocean at approx 10:45 am MDT on 7/30.pic.twitter.com/BIkjamFbTz
— Sidhant Sibal (@sidhant) July 30, 2022
According to its trajectory, the experts had estimated that the probability of this rocket falling on Europe “was practically nil and could almost rule out” the probability that it would fall in Europe, the Mediterranean or the Canary Islands if any fragment had survived re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, explained Jorge Lomba, head of the Space Department of the Center for Technological and Industrial Development (CDTI).
It is most likely that the rocket has mostly disintegrated when it enters the atmosphere and, although initially the trajectory stated that they would fall in latitudes lower than those of Europe, it has finally reached the Indian Ocean.
The Chinese rocket, which took off on July 24 from the island of Hainan and aimed transport a module to the Chinese orbital space station, the “Tiangong”, but has ended up circling the Earth. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has already assured that the chances that the Long March 5B (Long March 5B) would cause damage after its fall to Earth were “extremely low” and had warned that “in its final stage, the rocket re-enters the atmosphere and there most of its components will be destroyed“.
Although the risk seemed ruled out, scientists have closely watched the trajectory of the spacecraft, from United States or from the European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking Service (EUSST). The EUSST has been permanently coordinating with the CDTI and has had several services underway, including monitoring objects that wander without control and that could re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. Although the overall coordination of this body is done from the CDTI, it is Italia the country that coordinates the monitoring of Long March 5B.
the background
It is not the first time that a spacecraft has been watched by the international community. In May of last year it was also a rocket Long March 5B the one that alerted surveillance services around the world; that term disintegrating almost completely debris falling into the Indian Ocean, causing no damage.
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Three years earlier, in April 2018, the laboratory orbitsl Tiangong 1, which had been in disuse since 2016 and was wandering uncontrollably through space, was also monitored; it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the South Pacific Ocean, also without causing damage.
There are ways, and most of the time this is the case, of making controlled re-entries into the atmosphere of rocket parts that are sent into space and, in their case, into the ocean, but you have to store a lot of fuel for this, which is a great investment, details Lomba.