Chinese Rocket: Uncontrolled return to Earth scheduled for this weekend

Is an Asian country On April 29 the first module of its space station was placed in orbit, The most powerful and stately Chinese launcher, thanks to the Long-March 5B Carrier Rocket.

This is the first stage of this rocket currently in orbit, which must return to Earth. It is gradually losing height and its fall point is currently unknown.

China is very prudent on this point and has not published any indication of the hourly ability of the launcher to return to Earth’s atmosphere, where it will break down completely or partially.

For the Russian space agency Roscosmos, the entry can be made at 7:30 pm on Saturday (EDT) at the level of southern Indonesia. However, the U.S. Department of Defense is at 9 pm with a margin of nine hours error on both sides of this estimate

The window should gradually thin out in hours.

After a lengthy embarrassing silence from Chinese space and diplomatic officials, Beijing finally responded on Friday.

The majority of the components [de la fusée] After re-entering the atmosphere it is burned and destroyed […] The possibility of causing damage to aviation operations or [aux personnes, constructions et activités] Very little to the earth.

The Chinese media provided minimal coverage of the event on Saturday, satisfying themselves in repeating the remarks made the day before by a representative of the diplomacy.

If parts of the rocket remain intact after re-entering the atmosphere, they have a good chance of being damaged at sea as the planet is 70% water.

We hope they land in a place where they do not hurt anyoneU.S. Department of Defense spokesman Mike Howard said Friday that the U.S. is tracking the rocket.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has confirmed this week that he has no intention of destroying a rocket for his country. However, he noted that China had not carefully planned its launch.

There is a risk of hitting a residential area from a heavy launcher, but this is very rare, according to several experts interviewed by AFP.

Considering the size of the object, large pieces remain, Astes astronomer Florent Delphi at the Paris-PSL Observatory.

But is likely to have an impact on the populated area Small, less than one in a million, probably, Assures Nicholas Babrinsky, Head of the Engineering and Innovation Department at the European Space Agency (ESA).

No need to worry too much, Jonathan McDowell, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the United States and a great expert in space debris.

It is not a good practice for a ton of pieces of metal to touch the ground at speeds of hundreds of kilometers per hour, and to prevent this the China Long March 5B missions need to be revised.

Forewords

In 2020, debris from another longue-changing rocket crashed into villages in C డిte d’Ivoire, causing damage but no injuries.

In April 2018, China’s Tiangong-1 space laboratory crashed when it entered the atmosphere, two years after it ceased operations.

China has been investing billions of euros in its space program for decades.

The Asian nation sent the first astronaut into space in 2003. In early 2019, he landed a machine on the far side of the moon, the world’s first.

Last year, he brought back lunar samples and finalized his satellite navigation system (a competitor of American GPS) Beedown.

China plans to land the robot on Mars in the coming weeks. She announced that she wanted to build a lunar base with Russia.