Chinese Rocket Will Crash to Earth on November 5: Here’s What We Know
Chinese Rocket Will Crash to Earth on November 5: Here’s What We Know
Yet another Chinese rocket is set to tumble uncontrollably back to Earth this week
- A computer rendering of China's new Tiangong space station as seen from orbit. A rocket booster, used to deliver part of the station into space, will fall to Earth this weekend Credit: Alejandro Miranda/Alamy Stock Photo
The core stage of yet another Chinese Long March 5B rocket is set to tumble uncontrollably back to Earth this week after delivering the third and final module to China’s fledgling space station.
The roughly 25-ton (23 metric tons) rocket stage, which launched Oct. 31 to deliver the Mengtian laboratory cabin module to the Tiangong space station, is predicted to reenter Earth’s atmosphere on Saturday, Nov. 5 at 11:51 p.m. EDT, give or take 14 hours, according to researchers at The Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies.
Exactly where the rocket will land is unknown, but the possible debris field includes the U.S., Central and South America, Africa, India, China, Southeast Asia and Australia, according to The Aerospace Corporation, a U.S. government-funded nonprofit research center based in California. This is the fourth time in two years that China has disposed of its rockets in an uncontrolled manner. The previous crash landings saw metallic objects rain down upon villages in the Ivory Coast, debris land in the Indian Ocean near the Maldives, and rocket chunks crash dangerously close to villages in Borneo.
The first stage of a rocket, its booster, is usually the bulkiest and most powerful section—and the least likely to completely burn up upon reentry. There are ways to get around this issue. Engineers try to aim rockets so that their booster sections don’t escape into orbit, plopping them down harmlessly into the ocean instead. If boosters do make orbit, some are designed to fire a few extra bursts from their engines to steer them back into a controlled reentry.
No comments