Debris from a massive Chinese launch vehicle arrived on Earth on Saturday, according to the US Space Command. The former missile re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean around 12:45 p.m. EDT.
There was no immediate report of debris or damage caused by the rocket’s uncontrolled reentry.
#USSPACECOM can confirm that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Long March 5B (CZ-5B) re-entered over the Indian Ocean at approximately 10:45 AM MDT on 30 7. We direct you to #PRC for further details on the technical re-entry aspects such as potential debris dispersion + impact location.
— US Space Command (@US_SpaceCom) July 30, 2022
Before its arrival, the Aerospace Corporation said there was a chance it would burn up on return, but there was little risk of fragments causing damage or casualties. The corporation also cannot predict the exact point of re-entry or how much damage may be done.
The booster, which China decided not to send back through the atmosphere, caught the attention of the space community. It was part of the massive 23-tonne Long March 5B-Y3 rocket – China’s most powerful – that carried the Wentian module to the station, which currently houses three astronauts.
According to researchers at The Aerospace Corporation, “there is a non-zero probability that surviving debris will land in a populated area—over 88 percent of the world’s population lives under the potential debris footprint of re-entry.”
Although China is not alone in such practices, the size of the Long March missile stage has drawn particular attention.
China has allowed rocket stages to fall on their own to Earth at least twice before and was accused by NASA last year of “failing to meet responsible standards regarding its space debris” after parts of a Chinese rocket landed in the Indian Ocean.
Earlier this week, a Chinese cargo spacecraft serving the country’s permanent orbiting space station largely burned up on re-entry. Only small parts of the Tianzhou-3 spacecraft survived to land safely on Wednesday in a pre-designated area of the South Pacific, the China Manned Space Agency said.
A Long March-5B Y3 rocket carrying the Laboratory Module of China’s Wentian Space Station lifts off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on July 24, 2022 in Wenchang, Hainan Province, China. VCG/VCG via Getty Images
In 2018, Tiangong 1, the defunct Chinese space station, made an uncontrolled re-entry and landed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. In 2020, another Long March-5B missile fell into the atmosphere, eventually landing near the west coast of Africa.
China also drew heavy criticism after it used a missile to destroy one of its defunct weather satellites in 2007, creating a huge debris field.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian dismissed such concerns.
“From the development stage of the space engineering program, China has taken into account the reduction of debris and reentry from orbit into the atmosphere of missions involving launch vehicles and satellites sent into orbit,” Zhao said at a daily briefing on Wednesday.
“It is understood that this type of rocket adopts a special technical design in which most of the components will be burned up and destroyed during the re-entry process,” Zhao said. “The possibility of causing damage to aviation activities or to the ground is extremely low.”
The most significant re-entry breakup over a populated area was the space shuttle Columbia, which entered in February 2003. When the 200,000 lb spacecraft broke up over Texas, a significant amount of debris hit the ground, but there were no injuries.
Similarly, when Skylab re-entered in 1978, debris fell over Western Australia, but no injuries were reported.
William Harwood and Sophie Lewis contributed to this report.
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