The uncontrollable Chinese rocket eventually returned to Earth and disintegrated over the Indian Ocean.

A large segment of a Chinese rocket entered Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated over the Indian Ocean, north of the Maldives, on Sunday., according to the Chinese space agency, after speculating on where the 18-ton object would fall.

Officials in Beijing had said the free-falling segment of the Long March-5B rocket, which launched the first module of China’s new space station into Earth orbit on April 29, was low risk.

“After monitoring and analysis, at 10:24 am (02:24 GMT) on May 9, 2021, the remains of the last stage of the Long March 5B Yao-2 launcher re-entered the atmosphere.” China’s Manned Space Engineering Bureau said in a statement. statement, providing the coordinates of a point in the Indian Ocean near the Maldives.

He added that most of the segment had disintegrated and was destroyed on re-entry.

The Space-Track surveillance service, which uses US military data, also confirmed the re-entry.

“Everyone else who’s following # LongMarch5B back to school can relax. The rocket has fallen ”, tweeted.

The decline in the segment coincided with predictions by some experts that debris splashed into the ocean, given that 70% of the planet is covered in water.

But the uncontrolled re-entry of such a large object had raised concerns about possible damage and loss, even though the statistical probability was low.

The Asian country launched the first module of its space station into orbit on April 29, using the Long March 5B carrier rocket, China’s most powerful and imposing launcher.

China, very discreet on this subject, has not published any forecast on the possible time of entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it should completely or partially disintegrate.

For the Russian special agency Roscosmos, entry could be made on Saturday at 23:30 GMT in southern Indonesia. Whereas the US Department of Defense estimated that it would occur around 23:00 GMT, with a margin of error of nine hours.

After a long silence from the Chinese diplomatic and space authorities, Beijing finally reacted on Friday.

“Most of the components (of the rocket) will burn and destroy on entering the atmosphere,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.

“The probability of causing damage to air activities or (people, buildings) on the ground is extremely low”He said at a press conference.

El astrónomo radicado en Harvard Jonathan McDowell reaccionó en Twitter el sábado: “Nuevas predicciones de la Fuerza Espacial 18SPCS lo reduce a una órbita: Costa Rica, Haití, España, Cerdeña, Italia, Grecia y Creta, Israel, Jordania, Australia, Nueva Zelanda , Saudi Arabia”.

– Probability of impact –

Chinese media on Saturday gave minimal coverage of the event and limited themselves to reproducing the words of the diplomacy spokesman.

Although some parts of the rocket remain intact after entering the atmosphere, there is a good chance that they were destroyed at sea because 70% of the planet is water.

“We hope they land in a place where they won’t harm anyone”, Mike Howard, a spokesperson for the US Department of Defense, said on Friday, stressing that his country was closely following the trajectory of the rocket.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said last Thursday that his country had no intention of destroying the Chinese ship. But he hinted that China had not planned enough for its launch.

“Considering the size of the object, it is inevitable that large pieces will remain”said Florent Delefie, astronomer at the Paris-PSL Observatory.

But the probability of an impact in an inhabited area was “minimal, probably less than one in a million”, said Nicolas Bobrinsky, head of the engineering and innovation department at the European Space Agency (ESA).

– “Metal parts” –

“There is no need to worry too much”said Jonathan McDowell, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the United States.

“But the fact that a ton of pieces of metal falls to Earth at hundreds of km / h is not good practice, and China should revise the design of the Long March 5B missions to avoid this.”added.

In 2020, debris from another Longue Marche rocket crashed into villages in Côte d’Ivoire, causing damage but not injuring others.

The Tiangong-1 space laboratory disintegrated when it re-entered the atmosphere in 2018, two years after it ceased to operate, although Chinese authorities have denied losing control of the spacecraft.

China has invested billions of dollars in its space program for several decades.

The Asian giant sent its first astronaut into space in 2003. A Chinese probe landed on the other side of the Moon in 2019, a world first.

Last year, he brought back samples from the Moon and completed Beidu, his satellite navigation system (competitor to US GPS).

And in the coming weeks, China plans to land a small wheeled robot on Mars. In addition, the Chinese space agency has announced plans to build a lunar base with Russia.

(With information from AFP)

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