In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, the Long March 5B Y3 launch vehicle carrying the Wentian Laboratory Module takes off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Wenchang, south China’s Hainan Province , Sunday July 24 (AP)
Debris from a Chinese rocket will crash into Earth over the next few days, with debris likely to land across a wide swath of the world. Part of a Long March 5B rocket that China launched on July 24 will make an uncontrolled re-entry around July 31, according to Aerospace Corp, a California-based nonprofit that receives US funding. The possible debris field includes much of the US, as well as Africa, Australia, Brazil, India and Southeast Asia, according to Aerospace’s predictions. Concerns about the re-entry and the impact it could have are being dismissed by China, however, with state-backed media saying the warnings are just “sour grapes” from people resentful of the country’s development as space power “The United States is running out of ways to stop China’s development in the aerospace sector, so slander and defamation became the only thing left,” the Global Times newspaper reported , citing an expert. The descent of the booster, which weighs 23 metric tons, would be part of what critics say is a series of uncontrolled accidents that highlights the risks of China’s escalating space race with the US. “Due to the uncontrolled nature of their descent, there is a non-zero probability that surviving debris will land in a populated area: more than 88% of the world’s population lives under the potential debris footprint of re-entry,” he said Aerospace Tuesday. In May 2021, pieces of another Long March rocket landed in the Indian Ocean, prompting concerns that the Chinese space agency had lost control of it. “It is clear that China is not meeting responsible standards for space debris,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson had said. China has been closely monitoring the re-entry of the reinforcements since this week’s launch, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in Beijing on Wednesday. “It is customary international practice for rocket upper stages to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere upon re-entry,” Zhao said. “From the research and development stage of the space engineering program, it is designed with debris mitigation and orbit return in mind.” Bloomberg
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