China’s uncontrolled Long March 5B rocket has re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, landing somewhere near Sarawak, the Malaysian island state of Borneo.
The U.S. Space Command confirmed the rocket’s re-entry at 12:45 p.m. ET, but it remains unclear where its debris landed. In a translated Weibo post, China’s manned space agency said the rocket re-entered near the same area and that most of it had burned up on its way down.
Uncertainty about where the rocket would land gripped the entire globe
On July 24, China used a Long March 5B rocket to launch a laboratory module to its unfinished Tiangong space station. Unlike most rockets, the Long March 5B puts its first stage into orbit when it delivers its payload. This piece, which is over 100 feet long and weighs over 22 tons, orbited the Earth for a while until it crashed into the Earth unable to control its motion.
Uncertainty about where the missile would land has rippled around the world in the past week, as forecasts predicted it would land anywhere from Mexico to the southern tip of Africa. This is the third launch of China’s Long March 5B, marking its third out-of-control landing. In 2020, China used the Long March 5B to launch the main Tiangong module into space. Debris from the missile fell in Ivory Coast, and although no injuries were reported, there was some structural damage. Last year, China launched its first laboratory module aboard the Long March 5B, pieces of which ended up scattering in the Indian Ocean.
The re-entry appears to have been observed from Kuching in Sarawak, Malaysia. Debris will fall down in North Borneo, possibly Brunei. [corrected] https://t.co/sX6m1XMYoO
— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) July 30, 2022
Malaysian Twitter users filmed the rocket’s apparent re-entry, with some believing it to be a meteor. Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, believes debris from the rocket could end up near Sibu, Bintulu or Brunei – three cities located on the northern coast of Borneo – but thinks it is “unlikely” landed in a populated area.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson responded to the uncontrolled landing in a statement on Twitter. “The People’s Republic of China did not share specific information about the trajectory when their Long March 5B rocket fell back to Earth,” Nelson wrote. “All space nations should follow established best practices and do their part to share this type of information in advance to allow reliable predictions of potential debris impact risk, especially for heavy-lift vehicles such as the Long March 5B, which carry a significant risk of loss of life and property.”
Unfortunately, this is not the last out-of-control rocket to crash on Earth. China plans to launch its third and final module to Tiangong using the Long March 5B in October and will use the rocket again to launch a telescope into space in 2023.
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