A Chinese booster rocket made an uncontrolled return to Earth on Saturday, US Defense Department officials said, as they blamed Beijing for not sharing information about the potentially dangerous object’s descent.
The US Space Command confirmed that the Long March 5B rocket had re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean on Saturday, but referred to China any questions about the potential spread of debris and the impact site.
The Long March 5B rocket was used last Sunday to launch an uncrewed spacecraft called Wentian, carrying the second of three modules needed by China to complete its new Tiangong space station.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson criticized Beijing on Saturday, saying that not sharing details about the rocket crash was irresponsible and risky.
“All space nations should follow established best practices and contribute to sharing this type of information in advance,” Nelson tweeted, “to enable reliable predictions of potential debris impact risk, particularly for heavy-lift vehicles such as Long March 5B, which carry a significant risk of loss of life and property.
“This is critical to the responsible use of space and to ensuring the safety of people here on Earth.”
Aerospace Corp, a government-funded nonprofit research center near Los Angeles, said it was reckless to allow the rocket’s entire main stage — which weighs 22.5 tons — to return to Earth in an uncontrolled reentry.
Analysts said last week that the rocket’s body will disintegrate as it plunges through the atmosphere, but is large enough that numerous pieces will likely survive a fiery re-entry to shower debris over an area about 2,000 km (1,240 miles ) with a width of about 70 km (44 mi).
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately comment. China said earlier this week it would closely monitor the debris, but it posed little risk to anyone on the ground.
Fragments of another Chinese Long March 5B landed in Ivory Coast in 2020, damaging several buildings in the West African nation, although no injuries were reported.
The U.S. and most other space nations typically spend extra on designing their rockets to avoid large, uncontrolled re-entries—an imperative seen largely after large chunks of NASA’s Skylab space station fell from orbit in 1979 and landed in Australia.
The Tiangong space station is one of the crown jewels of Beijing’s ambitious space program, which has landed robotic rovers on Mars and the moon and made China only the third nation to put humans into orbit.
The new module, powered by Long March 5B, successfully docked with Tiangong’s main module on Monday, and the three astronauts who had been living in the main compartment since June successfully entered the new laboratory.
China has poured billions of dollars into spaceflight and exploration as it seeks to build a program that reflects its status as a rising world power.
With Agence France-Presse and Reuters
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