At the end of April, the “Long March 5B” heavy-lift rocket was launched from the Wenchang spaceport in China. Now it has largely burned up when it re-entered the earth’s atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner, and parts of it fell into the sea.
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The rocket launched on April 29th from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan Province. According to China, the missile largely burned up when it re-entered the atmosphere, and remains fell into the sea.
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(dpa / Reuters)
The fear of a devastating rain shower over inhabited areas has not been confirmed: the remains of a rocket used to build the first Chinese space station fell into the open sea between the Arabian Peninsula and India. The Chinese state media reported on Sunday morning. Accordingly, most of the remains of the missile burned when it entered the atmosphere, the remaining debris fell into the Indian Ocean. On April 29, the “Long March 5B” rocket launched the 22-ton “Tianhe” (Heavenly Harmony) module, which is to form the main part of the Chinese space station.
According to Chinese information, parts of the falling rocket stage entered the atmosphere at around 10:24 local time (2:24 p.m. CEST) on Sunday and burned up there. The impact of other parts occurred in the Indian Ocean southwest of India and Sri Lanka near the archipelago of the Maldives at a point at longitude 72.47 east and latitude 2.65 north.
Experts had warned that the debris could enter the atmosphere “uncontrollably” at the weekend – after all, the rocket was not built to be controlled by engines in such a way that it can be targeted over an uninhabited area or the sea. It was warned of a similar outcome as in May 2020: At that time, after the first flight of the new missile type, rubble fell in the West African Ivory Coast and, according to local reports, damaged houses there.
Normally, such rocket stages are not designed to get into orbit around the earth at all, reported Marlon Sorge from the Center for Re-Entry Studies (CORDS) of the Aerospace Corporation in the American state of California. Rather, their trajectory is usually planned in such a way that they fall into a safe crash area after take-off – for example into the sea. If a rocket is in orbit, a so-called deorbit maneuver must be carried out, in which engines are used to select the re-entry point in a controlled manner.
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