A year after the debris of a Chinese rocket crashed into the Indian Ocean, yet another one of Beijing’s spacecraft poses serious concerns.
According to the reports, the core stage of China’s Long March 5B rocket will soon re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and come crashing down following the lift-off on Sunday.
Experts fear that the rocket’s backbone will not fully burn up in the atmosphere, posing a risk of a debris shower in an unknown location.
It has since come to light that the rocket was carrying a new lab called the Wentian module to the Tiangong Space Station.
While the chances of the rocket’s falling core stage crashing onto a populated area are low, critics have blasted China for taking unnecessary risks.
“[China is] failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said.
According to the experts on the matter, the core stage will continue looping the Earth in the following days before either burning up completely or crashing.
Due to various fluctuations in the atmosphere, the rocket’s fall trajectory currently cannot be predicted.
In normal cases, discarded rocket parts re-enter the atmosphere shortly after liftoff and fall into the ocean before they could enter orbit and be steered out of our control.
In this case, however, China’s risky rocket launch process means that discarded stages often end up in orbit, meaning their crashing cannot be controlled or predicted accurately.
Despite the looming threat over our heads, the Chinese authorities remain calm and insist that the risk of their rocket causing any damage is “extremely low.”
The falling rocket comes just over a year after the debris of another Beijing spacecraft crashed into the Indian Ocean.
“Spacefaring nations must minimize the risks to people and property on Earth of re-entries of space objects and maximize transparency regarding those operations,” Nelson previously said.
“It is clear that China is failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris.”
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