The stage A Chinese rocket core, weighing around 22 metric tons, will fall to Earth this weekend.
According to experts, space debris from the Long March 5B carrier ship will hit the surface at high speed next Sunday and could be in a populated area.
Last Sunday, July 24, China sent a rocket from Wenchang in the southern island province of Hainan. A new solar-powered laboratory was being transported on it, to be added to the Tiangong Space Station.
However, it is almost certain that, due to the size of the propellant, the debris will not burn up upon entering the atmosphere and impacting with the Earth.
(Read on: Space Debris: The Celestial ‘Environment’ Concern.)
According to the Aerospace Corporation Organization, the device is scheduled to re-enter at 00:24 BST on Sunday. So far, there is only data on when it will fall and not where.
Even the impact site may not be known, since the booster is circling the earth, making it difficult to follow the path of travel.
Our latest prediction for #CZ5B rocket body reentry is:
🚀30 Jul 2022 18:26 UTC ± 6 hours
Reentry will be along one of the ground tracks shown here. It is still too early to determine a meaningful debris footprint. Follow this page for updates:https://t.co/SxrMtcrMrs pic.twitter.com/mjg0F8k1qX— The Aerospace Corporation (@AerospaceCorp) July 29, 2022
There is a 99.5 percent chance that nothing will happen
As reported by the newspaper ‘Mail Online’, “more than 88 percent of the world’s population lives under the area of potential re-entrywhich extends throughout Africa, India, Australia and Central America”.
However, Aerospace Corporation consultant Ted Muelhaupt says the risk to people is fairly low, because 75% of the area marked as potential is made up of water, desert or jungle.
In addition, the expert noted on his Twitter account that “there is a 99.5 percent chance that nothing will happen.”
(You can read: Nasa finds a new crater on the Moon caused by the impact of a mysterious rocket).
Launch providers have access to technologies and mission designs that could eliminate the need for most re-entries
Even Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said that in the worst case scenario “this event will be less serious than a single cruise missile attack that we have seen every day in the Ukraine war, so let’s go to put it in some perspective here.”
And although the risks are minor, experts continue to stress that China does not meet responsible standards for its space debris. In fact, authors of an article published in the journal Nature Astronomy stated that: “Launch providers have access to technologies and mission designs today that could eliminate the need for most uncontrolled re-entries.”
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