The piece of the Long March 5B rocket measured around 30 metres long and 5 metres wide, and weighed a whopping 20 metric tonnes – around three times heavier than an elephant
A huge piece of a Chinese rocket has slammed uncontrolled into Earth’s atmosphere, experts have revealed.
The piece of the Long March 5B rocket measured around 30 metres long and 5 metres wide, and weighed a whopping 20 metric tonnes. That’s around three times heavier than an elephant!
According to the US Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron, the piece fell to Earth at around 16:33 BST yesterday, re-entering off the west coast of Africa.
It tweeted: “#18SPCS has confirmed the reentry of the CZ-5B R/B (#45601, 2020-027C) at 08:33 PDT, over the Atlantic Ocean. The #CZ5B launched China’s test crew capsule on 5 May 2020. #spaceflightsafety.
Thankfully, most of the rocket is likely to have burned up as it plunged back into the atmosphere, although some pieces may have made it to Earth.
The piece of rocket comes from China’s Long March 5 rocket, which launched on May 5 and is designed to launch modules for China’s planned space station.
While old rocket stages regularly re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere, it’s very rare for pieces this big to make an uncontrolled descent.
Space agencies including NASA and SpaceX often try to guide rocket stages toward re-entries over the ocean, in the hopes of reducing the risk of debris falling over populated areas.
However, this is easier said than done.
Thankfully, in this case, any debris that reached the ground would have fallen into the sea.
China plans to launch at least three more rockets in 2021 and 2022, so there’s likely to be more uncontrolled rocket re-entries.
Source: Mirror
