Uncontrolled debris from a Chinese rocket could crash back to Earth as soon as Saturday, according to The Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded space research center that tracks the re-entry of orbital debris.
China launched a new laboratory module called the Wentian for its Tiangong space station from Hainan Island in the South China Sea earlier this week. The rocket carrying the module, Long March 5B, will make an uncontrolled re-entry.
This is not the first time that rocket debris from China’s space program has hurtled through the atmosphere with an air of suspense.
In May 2021, the world watched uncertainly as it tried to determine where the remains of a rocket of the same class were located carrying the initial module of the Tiangong space station would crash.
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After days of tense monitoring by scientists and various agencies, including the United States Space Command, the rocket re-entered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.
Now, an aftershock situation is at hand.
The rocket, China’s largest, is about 175 feet long and weighs 23 metric tons. according to the Aerospace Corporation. It is too early to say exactly where it will fall.
The US Space Command said in a statement that the rocket re-entry location from last year could not be “identified until within a few hours of his re-entry”. An agency The spokesman told CNN that he is monitoring space debris from this week’s launch.
But experts stress that the risk to people in general and to the United States is extremely low.
“We estimate that basically only 3% of the Earth’s track is over the US,” said Lael Woods, director of The Aerospace Corporation.
In general, space agencies try to guide re-entry rockets above a certain size to make sure they land somewhere that doesn’t pose a threat to people, according to Marlon Sorge, director of the Space Center for Orbital Debris and Reentry Studies. Aerospace Corporation.
If an object has a 1 in 10,000 chance of hitting an area where it could hurt someone, NASA will try to control its re-entry, Sorge told USA TODAY.
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“It’s fundamentally a low-risk thing, but it’s much higher than it should be. It’s 10 times higher than our thresholds,” Ted Muelhaupt, a re-entry debris expert who works with the Aerospace Corporation, told USA TODAY on Wednesday.
“But the fact that we’re having this conversation; the fact that people are out there following him… watching him… is unnecessary. Even if nothing happens, there is a cost for people to be ready in case something happens.”
NASA has chided China’s space agency in the past for allowing uncontrolled re-entries.
“It is clear that China is not meeting responsible standards regarding its space debris.” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement following the re-entry of last year’s rocket debris.
Contributing: The Associated Press
