There are pieces of the Chinese rocket on the ground in Southeast Asia.
The Long March 5B rocket's 25-ton core stage slammed into the Indian Ocean on Saturday, July 30. Experts estimate that 20% to 40% of the booster survived the fiery journey after it fell.
The pieces are starting to show up. Some pieces of the booster were found in multiple spots along the reentry path, some of them large enough to cause serious damage or injury if they fell on a village or city. It looks like none of them did.
The biggest spaceship to fall out of the sky.
After CZ-5B r/b reentry over Indonesia at Saturday midnight (local time) ago, many debris possibly related to this space junk was found. 3 debris have been found by local people at Sanggau regency (near Indonesia-Malaysia border). @planet4589@Marco_Langbroek@jremis @cosmos4u pic.twitter.com/wcGUffN14vAugust 1, 2022
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Significant debris falls in Indonesia and Malaysia. "No casualties or property damage reported, but debris is near villages and a few hundred metres either way could have been a different story," said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and satellite tracker. The Long March 5B is also known as the CZ-5B.
The Long March 5B sent a new module toward China's space station which is under construction. The core stage of the rocket was pulled back down to Earth by atmospheric drag after it was put into space.
Big rockets have a unique disposal strategy that is hard to predict. Other large core stages are steered to a safe destruction in the ocean or on unpopulated land shortly after liftoff or, in the case of the Falcon Heavy vehicles, come down for vertical landings and reuse.
The Long March 5B scenario is controversial due to the potential for injury and damage that it can cause. Chinese space officials have come under fire from the space community for allowing the Long March 5B core to become big pieces of space junk on all three of the rocket's missions to date.
"What really should have happened is, there should have been some fuel left on board for this to be a controlled reenter," said a senior technical fellow at the California-based tracking company. It would be the right thing to do.
The first Long March 5B mission ended up raining debris on the West African nation ofIvory Coast. In April 2021, the second dumped its rocket remnants into the indian ocean.
We will get another Long March 5B rocket fall soon. In October, the booster is expected to send a new module to Tiangong.
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