Chinese rocket debris lands in Indian Ocean, draws criticism from NASA
09 May, 2021
Remnants of China's biggest rocket landed in the Indian Ocean on Sunday (May 9), with the majority of its components destroyed after re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, according to Chinese state media, ending days of speculation over where in fact the debris would hit.
The coordinates given by state media, citing the China Manned Space Engineering Office, put the idea of impact in the ocean, west of the Maldives archipelago.
Debris from the Long March 5B has already established some people looking warily skyward since shortly after it blasted faraway from China's Hainan island on Apr 29, but the China Manned Space Engineering Office said almost all of the debris was burnt up in the atmosphere.
State media reported elements of the rocket re-entered the atmosphere at 10.24am Beijing time and landed at a spot with the coordinates of longitude 72.47 degrees east and latitude 2.65 degrees north.
The US Space command confirmed the re-entry of the rocket over the Arabian Peninsula, but said it was unknown if the debris impacted land or water.
"The exact located area of the impact and the span of debris, both which are unknown at the moment, will never be released by US Space Command," it said in a statement on its website.
The Long March was the next deployment of the 5B variant since its maiden flight in May 2020. This past year, pieces from the first Long March 5B fell on Ivory Coast, damaging several buildings. No injuries were reported.
"Spacefaring nations must minimise the risks to persons and property on the planet of re-entries of space objects and maximise transparency regarding those operations," NASA administrator Bill Nelson, a former senator and astronaut who was simply picked for the role in March, said in a statement following the re-entry.
"It is clear that China is failing woefully to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris."
ANXIETY OVER POTENTIAL DEBRIS ZONE
With almost all of the Earth's surface included in water, the chances of populated area on land being hit had been low, and the probability of injuries even lower, according to experts.
But uncertainty over the rocket's orbital decay and China's failure to issue better reassurances in the run-up to the re-entry fuelled anxiety.
During the rocket's flight, Harvard-based astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told Reuters that the potential debris zone might have been as far north as New York, Madrid or Beijing, and as far south as southern Chile and Wellington, New Zealand.
Ever since large chunks of the NASA space station Skylab fell from orbit in July 1979 and landed in Australia, most countries have sought to avoid such uncontrolled re-entries through their spacecraft design, McDowell said.
"It creates the Chinese rocket designers look lazy that they didn't address this," said McDowell, a member of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The Global Times, a Chinese tabloid published by the official People's Daily, dismissed as "Western hype" concerns that the rocket is "out of control" and may cause damage.
"It is common practice around the world for upper stages of rockets to burn up while reentering the atmosphere," said Wang Wenbin, a spokesman at the Chinese foreign ministry, at a regular media briefing on Friday.
"To my knowledge, the upper stage of the rocket has been deactivated, which signifies that almost all of its parts will burn up upon re-entry, making the likelihood of harm to aviation or ground facilities and activities extremely low," Wang said at that time.
The rocket, which placed into orbit an unmanned Tianhe module containing exactly what will become living quarters for three crew on a permanent Chinese space station, is defined to be followed by 10 more missions to complete the station by 2022.
Heavy-lift Long March 5 rockets have been key to China's near-term space ambitions - from the delivery of modules and crew of the planned space station to launches of exploratory probes to the moon and even Mars.
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