23-Tonne Chinese Rocket Uncontrollably Falling Back on Earth
NEW DELHI, Nov 3: A 23-tonne Chinese rocket fired last week to take Mengtian module to its under-construction space station, is uncontrollably falling back to earth, no one knows where.
According to reports, days after it launched and docked the third module with its under-construction space station, the Chinese rocket that took the Mengtian module to space is tumbling back to Earth. Reports indicate that Beijing did not ensure a controlled deorbit of the rocket’s core stage and the 23-ton rocket is falling back to the planet.
The China Manned Space Agency (CSMA) launched the Long March 5B rocket with the Mengtian module to Tiangong marking the completion of the flying laboratory. The rocket is on a course toward the planet, where it is expected to crash and burn in Earth’s atmosphere, however past experiences have shown some chunks survive the fiery re-entry crashing on the surface.
While nobody has to alter their lives because of this, 88 per cent of the world’s population is at risk, and so seven billion people are at risk from the Chinese space debris falling on them,” some experts said. While the panel of experts noted that they are not overhyping the event, they noted that “the risk to an individual is six per 10 trillion. That’s a really small number.”
Earlier this year, the Long March 5B’s first stage made an uncontrolled re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere over Southeast Asia. The re-entry happened about six days after the rocket was launched into space with Wentian, the second of three modules of the Chinese space station. While China had provided no information about the descent of the core stage of the rocket, it came down over the Indian Ocean.
While most of the rocket burned in the atmosphere, remnants of the booster and the launchers were, however, found in parts of Southeast Asia including Malaysia and Indonesia. Western and Asian countries have in the past accused China of not sharing any information about the tumbling rocket and the re-entry path or debris assessment.
The Tiangong will be the second permanently inhabited outpost in low-earth orbit after the NASA-led International Space Station. The Tianhe, Wentian, and Mengtian lab modules will form a basic T-shape structure of the Chinese space station. The Tiangong space station is one of the crown jewels of Beijing’s ambitious space program, which has landed robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon and made China only the third nation to put humans in orbit.
(Manas Dasgupta)
