For a few hours Monday, scientists held their breath as they watched a nearly 20-ton piece of space debris from a Chinese rocket fall through the sky and pass over Los Angeles and New York City, uncontrolled.
The speed at which the debris — the fourth-largest to return to Earth uncontrolled — was travelling made it hard for scientists to guess where the debris would ultimately crash. “It was travelling very fast horizontally in the atmosphere and it’s hard to predict where it would come down,” Jonathan McDowell, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, told CNN.
The debris was the empty core stage of a Chinese Long March 5B (CZ-5B) rocket, which was successfully launched on May 5, spent several days in orbit as part of its mission before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.
The 18th Space Control Squadron, a unit of the U.S. Air Force, confirmed the 30 metre-long core stage’s descent on May 11 and scientists expected that parts of the stage would burn up on re-entry.
Ultimately, the debris was recorded splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean, just off the west coast of Mauritania in northwest Africa.
McDowell told CNN that had the debris crashed on inhabited land, the damage would be localized rather than widespread, similar to if an airplane part were to crash on the ground.
“Once they reach the lower atmosphere they are traveling relatively slowly, so worst case is they could take out a house,” he said. Nevertheless, he tweeted that the rocket part’s fall was unusual: “I’ve never seen a major reentry pass directly over so many major conurbations!”
According to Science Alert, the CZ–5B was launched last week to transport an experimental prototype spacecraft into orbit, called the Chinese next-generation crewed spacecraft, “The successful landing of the new spacecraft from a high orbit also shows China is serious about sending astronauts beyond low Earth orbit (something only NASA has achieved so far) and eventually sending its astronauts to the Moon,” SpaceNews reporter Andrew Jones told AFP.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMijQFodHRwczovL25hdGlvbmFscG9zdC5jb20vbmV3cy93b3JsZC9uZWFybHktMjAtdG9ucy1vZi1jaGluZXNlLXNwYWNlLWRlYnJpcy10cmFja3Mtb3Zlci1uZXcteW9yay1jaXR5LWFuZC1mYWxscy10by1lYXJ0aC1hcy1zY2llbnRpc3RzLXdhdGNoZWTSAZEBaHR0cHM6Ly9uYXRpb25hbHBvc3QuY29tL25ld3Mvd29ybGQvbmVhcmx5LTIwLXRvbnMtb2YtY2hpbmVzZS1zcGFjZS1kZWJyaXMtdHJhY2tzLW92ZXItbmV3LXlvcmstY2l0eS1hbmQtZmFsbHMtdG8tZWFydGgtYXMtc2NpZW50aXN0cy13YXRjaGVkL2FtcA?oc=5
2020-05-13 15:57:00Z
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