Debris from runaway Chinese rocket falls in Indian Ocean
Security agencies and surveillance services around the world have been keeping an eye on where the remains of a Chinese rocket would fall. The remains of the Chinese ship Long March 5B have impacted this Saturday in the Indian Ocean after it took off on July 24. Its objective was to transport a module to the Chinese orbital space station, the "Tiangong".
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According to Jorge Lomba, head of the Space department of the Center for Technological and Industrial Development (CDTI), the Chinese rocket has impacted the Indian Ocean after an uncontrolled re-entry into the atmosphere, where it is most likely that it has "disintegrated". . The ship, with an estimated mass of about 20 tons, was traveling uncontrollably at a speed of 28,000 kilometers per hour.
Lomba has warned that this type of rocket re-entry into the atmosphere in the United States and Europe is done in a "controlled" manner, so it is known, in the event that it does not disintegrate, where it falls. According to its trajectory, the experts estimated that the probability that this rocket would fall on Europe "was practically nil and the probability that it would fall on Europe, the Mediterranean or the Canary Islands could almost be ruled out."
#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 burned out during re-entry. pic.twitter.com/StX0QDmYiA https://t.co/WgrJXtD7dX
— Wᵒˡᵛᵉʳᶤᶰᵉ Uᵖᵈᵃᵗᵉˢ𖤐 (@W0lverineupdate) July 30, 2022
There was already a precedent
It is not the first time that a Chinese ship has been watched by the international community. In May of last year, it was also a Long March 5B rocket that alerted surveillance services around the world; it ended up almost completely disintegrating and the remains falling into the Indian Ocean, causing no damage.
Three years earlier, in April 2018, the Tiangong 1 orbital laboratory, 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, causing no damage.
