Debris from Chinese rocket crashes back to Earth
Debris from a rocket launched by China crashed back to Earth on Sunday, landing in the Indian Ocean, according to China's space agency, after days of speculation over when or where it could end up.
Parts of the Long March 5B rocket re-entered the atmosphere at 10:24 a.m. Beijing time (10:24 p.m. ET), the China Manned Space Agency said in an English-language statement on its website.
The coordinates put the point of impact in the Indian Ocean somewhere above the Maldives archipelago and south of India. Most of the debris was burnt up in the atmosphere upon re-entry, it said.
The 98-foot-long, 20-ton section rocket launched on April 29 carried the main module of the country’s new space station, and was the first of the expected 11 missions necessary to complete the project.
It’s common for parts of rockets to fall back to Earth, but this piece caused concern because its lack of control meant that experts weren’t sure where on the planet it would strike.
There was a tiny chance the debris could have hit New York, Los Angeles, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, the Nigerian capital of Abuja or Beijing.
U.S. Space Command also confirmed that the rocket re-entered over the Arabian Peninsula at approximately 10:15 p.m. E.T., but said in a statement that it was unknown if the debris impacted land or water.
“An ocean reentry was always statistically the most likely," astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Jonathan McDowell, who tracked the tumbling rocket part, said in a tweet. "It appears China won its gamble… But it was still reckless.”
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson also accused China of "failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris" in a statement.
“Spacefaring nations must minimize the risks to people and property on Earth of re-entries of space objects and maximize transparency regarding those operations," he said.
Usually, discarded rocket stages don’t reach orbit and instead crash down to earth, often into water.
But that didn’t happen this time. Instead, the first stage of the Long March 5B rocket reached orbital velocity rather than falling downrange, according to the California-based Aerospace Corporation.
That meant that the empty rocket body entered an elliptical orbit around Earth where it began being dragged toward an uncontrolled re-entry, the corporation added.
Ahead of it landing, the non-profit organization put the chance of the debris landing in the ocean at 75 percent. It said that between 20 and 40 percent of the rocket remnant would likely reach the ground or water.
In China, concerns the rocket was "out of control" and could cause damage were dismissed as "Western hype" by the state run Global Times tabloid.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin also said Friday that the rocket would burn up on re-entry, calling its descent “common international practice.”
China’s first space station, Tiangong-1, crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2016 after Beijing confirmed it had lost control. In 2019, the space agency controlled the demolition of its second station, Tiangong-2, in the atmosphere.
A year ago, another Chinese rocket piece passed over New York and Los Angeles before crashing into Ivory Coast, in West Africa, where it damaged buildings but caused no reported injuries.
Experts say the re-entry of the rocket debris this weekend is part of a bigger problem that's only going to get worse, as countries launch more rockets that could either cause damage by crashing back to Earth — or collide and create a cloud of space debris that could imperil other satellites or astronauts.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
