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By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Chinese rocket fell back to Earth on Saturday over the Indian Ocean, but NASA said Beijing had not shared the “specific trajectory information” needed to know where debris might fall.
The U.S. Space Command said the Long March 5B rocket re-entered the Indian Ocean at 12:45 p.m. EDT (1645 GMT) Saturday, but referred questions about “the technical aspects of the re-entry, such as the possible location of the impact of the debris spill” in China.
“All spacefaring nations should follow established best practices and do their part to share this type of information in advance to enable reliable predictions of the potential risk of debris impact,” the administrator said. of NASA Bill Nelson. “Doing so is critical to the responsible use of space and to ensuring the safety of people here on Earth.”
Social media users in Malaysia posted a video of what appeared to be rocket debris.
Aerospace Corp, a nonprofit government-funded research center near Los Angeles, said it was unwise to allow the entire main stage of the rocket, which weighs 22.5 tons (about 48,500 pounds), to return to the Earth in an uncontrolled reentry.
Earlier this week, analysts said the body of the rocket would disintegrate as it plunged through the atmosphere, but it is large enough that numerous pieces would likely survive a fiery reentry into the shower debris in an area about 2,000 km (1,240 mi) long by about 70 km. (44 miles) wide.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington had no immediate comment. China said earlier this week it would closely monitor the debris, but said it posed little risk to anyone on the ground.
Long March 5B lifted off on July 24 to deliver a laboratory module to China’s new space station under construction in orbit, marking the third flight of China’s most powerful rocket since its inaugural launch in 2020.
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Fragments of another Chinese Long March 5B landed in Ivory Coast in 2020, damaging several buildings in the West African nation, although no injuries were reported.
By contrast, he said, the United States and most other spacefaring nations generally go to the extra expense of designing their rockets to avoid large uncontrolled entries, an imperative largely observed since large chunks of the Skylab space station of NASA fell from orbit in 1979 and landed in Australia.
Last year, NASA and others accused China of being opaque after the Beijing government remained silent on the estimated debris trajectory or re-entry window for its final Long March rocket flight in May 2021.
The wreckage of that flight ended up landing harmlessly in the Indian Ocean.
(The story is resubmitted to remove the extra word “said” in paragraph 2)
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Alistair Bell)