The remains of China’s largest missile, fired last week, are expected to fall back through the atmosphere late Saturday or early Sunday, the US federal-funded space-based research and development center said. China’s State Department said Friday that most of the rocket’s debris will be incinerated on re-entry and most likely will not do any damage after the US military said what it called uncontrolled re-entry was being pursued by US space command.
In a tweet sent Friday night in the U.S., Aerospace Corporation said the Center for Orbital Re-Entry and Debris Studies (CORDS) latest forecast for the re-entry of the Long March 5B missile was eight hours on both Pages from 0419 GMT on Sunday.
Our latest prediction for # LongMarch5B The CZ-5B missile body will re-enter on May 9, 2021 at 04:19 UTC ± 8 hours along the ground track shown here. Follow this page for updates: https://t.co/p2AU9zVEpA pic.twitter.com/rsE6yzcnHb
– The Aerospace Corporation (@AerospaceCorp) May 7, 2021
The most recent “informed forecast” from CORDS of the missile’s re-entry location was given near the North Island of New Zealand. However, it has been found that re-entry is possible anywhere on paths that cover large parts of the globe.
The Long March 5B, consisting of a core stage and four boosters, was launched on April 29 with the unmanned Tianhe module from the Chinese island of Hainan. It contains the future living quarters of a permanent Chinese space station.
The March 5 family of rockets has been an integral part of China’s near-term space ambitions, from delivering modules and crew members for the proposed space station to launching exploratory probes to the moon and even Mars.
The Long March, which took off last week, was the second deployment of the 5B variant since its maiden flight in May last year.
Harvard-based astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell previously told Reuters there was a chance that rocket fragments could fall over land, possibly in a populated area, such as in May 2020 when parts of the first long March 5B rained in Ivory Coast. Damage to multiple buildings, although no injuries were reported.
Debris from Chinese rocket launches is not uncommon in China. In late April, authorities in Shiyan city, Hubei province, issued a notice to people in the surrounding county to prepare for evacuation as parts were expected to land in the area.
“Long March 5B’s re-entry is unusual as the rocket’s first stage reached orbital velocity during launch rather than falling to the lower range as usual,” Aerospace Corporation said in a blog post. “The empty missile body is now in an elliptical orbit around the earth, where it is being pulled in the direction of uncontrolled reentry.
“The empty core has been losing altitude since last week, but the rate of its decay in orbit remains uncertain due to unpredictable atmospheric variables.
At 18 tons, it is one of the largest space debris that gets back to earth. The core phase of the first Long March 5B, which returned to Earth last year, weighed nearly 20 tons and was broken only by debris from the Columbia Space Shuttle in 2003, the Soviet Union’s Salyut 7 space station in 1991, and NASA’s Skylab in that year Exceeded in 1979.
READ | China says its missile waste is unlikely to do any harm
READ | The runaway Chinese missile falls back to Earth this weekend. Which country is in danger?
إرسال تعليق