Security agencies and surveillance services around the world, including Spainthey are pending again where will the remains of a chinese rocket fall; Its about Long March 5B, with an estimated mass of about 20 tons and traveling without control at a speed of 28,000 kilometers per hour. According to the latest monitoring data, the remains of the rocket will enter the Earth’s atmosphere in sometime this weekendwith a reentry window between 20:53 on Saturday (18:53 GMT) and 12:53 on Sunday Spanish time (10:53 GMT).
Based on its current trajectory, experts estimate that the probability of this rocket falling on Europe “is practically nil and one can almost rule out” the probability that they will fall in Europe, the Mediterranean or the Canary Islands if any fragment survives re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. “According to the latest available data, there is currently no orbit indicating that the Chinese rocket debris could fall on European soil“, Jorge Lomba, head of the Space department of the Center for Technological and Industrial Development (CDTI), told EFE.
According to the latest data available to this expert, the remains of the rocket They would be this noon very close to hitting the shield of the atmosphere and they would be “below 200 kilometers high”, which could indicate that they would enter around 21:17, Spanish time (19.17 UTM), +- six hours. Most likely, Lomba explained, is that the rocket will disintegrate for the most part when it enters the atmosphere.but he has assured that the trajectory of the apparatus indicates that the remains -if any- would fall at lower latitudes than those of Europe and it is more possible that they will fall on the ocean than on land.
The Chinese rocket, which took off on July 24 from the island of Hainan and aimed transport a module to the Chinese orbital space station, the “Tiangong”, is circling the Earth. In recent hours, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has assured that the chances that the Long March 5B will cause damage after its fall to Earth are “extremely low” and has warned that “in its final stage, the rocket re-enters the atmosphere and there most of its components will be destroyed“.
Although the risk seems ruled out, scientists continue to closely monitor the trajectory of this ship. That is what has been done since United States or from the European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking Service (EUSST). The EUSST is permanently coordinated by the CDTI and has various services in place, including monitoring objects that wander without control and that could re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. Although the overall coordination of this body is done from the CDTI, it is Italy the country that coordinates the monitoring of Long March 5B.
There are channels of Youtube that allow to follow the trajectory of the rocket live:
the background
It is not the first time that a spacecraft has been watched by the international community. In May of last year it was also a rocket Long March 5B the one that alerted surveillance services around the world; that term disintegrating almost completely debris falling into the Indian Ocean, causing no damage.
Three years earlier, in April 2018, the laboratory orbitsl Tiangong 1, which had been in disuse since 2016 and was wandering uncontrollably through space, was also monitored; it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the South Pacific Ocean, also without causing damage.
Related news
There are ways, and most of the time this is the case, of making controlled re-entries into the atmosphere of rocket parts that are sent into space and, in their case, into the ocean, but you have to store a lot of fuel for this, which is a great investment, details Lomba.
China does not seem to be doing so, says this expert, who adds that the possibility of developing international regulation is being considered.