ANOTHER HUGE PIECE OF CHINESE SPACE JUNK IS FALLING TO EARTH, LIKELY WON’T HIT YOU

A Long March 5B Y3 carrier rocket was launched from the Wenchang Space Launch Centre in China’s Hainan province on July 24.

Thu 03 November 2022:

On Monday, China successfully launched the third and final component of the new Tiangong Space Station, and this weekend, the 23-ton rocket’s body will return to Earth.

However, vast oceans or barren regions will be the majority of the places where debris can fall from the sky.

The precise location of the rocket body’s fall is unknown. It is doubtful that any space debris will strike people, though.

The portion of the Long March rocket body that will impact Earth is unknown; it is around the size of a 10-story building.

The rocket body is too big to totally disintegrate, though some of it will probably burn when it passes through the atmosphere.

Experts at Aerospace Corporation have estimated that between 20 percent and 40 percent of the mass of a large object could land on Earth as it falls through the atmosphere.

It’s too early to predict exactly where the rocket, which will likely land in pieces, will land.

“For those who’ve been tracking the previous versions of this: Here we go again,” Ted Muelhaupt, a consultant with The Aerospace Corporation’s Corporate Chief Engineer’s Office, said during a briefing on Wednesday (Nov. 2) that discussed the upcoming space junk crash and what could be done in the future to prevent such incidents.

While Muelhaupt was quick to point out that “nobody has to alter their lives because of this,” he also pointed out that “88% of the world’s population is at risk, and so 7 billion people are at risk” from the Chinese space debris falling on them.

According to estimates, almost all of the pieces will fall into desolate lands or the ocean.

Yet space industry leaders have condemned China’s uncontrolled re-entry, saying it poses an unnecessary risk to human life and properties.

Establishment of international laws

Most rockets are designed such that their core stages ditch into the ocean or over unoccupied land shortly after liftoff, or come back to Earth for safe landings, in the case of SpaceX vehicles. But the Long March 5B core stage reaches orbit, and China lets it stay up until drag brings it down in an uncontrolled fashion.

As more of these uncontrolled Chinese reentries occur, more and more voices are calling for the establishment of international laws or norms to prevent such incidents from happening. Marlon Sorge, Executive Director for The Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (CORDS(opens in new tab)), said during today’s briefing that international laws are unclear when it comes to these types of reentries. “And the reality is there aren’t any real laws, treaties, internationally that govern what you’re allowed to do in terms of reentry,” Sorge said. “So There isn’t really a direct legal way to control what’s going on on an international level.”

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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