A rocket body reenters.
The Chinese Manned Space Agency launched the third and final module of the space station on Monday. China did not perform a controlled deorbit of the rocket's core stage after it was used in a launch. A Chinese rocket body will plummet to Earth above a yet-to-be-designated location in the coming days.
Ted Muelhaupt, a consultant with The Aerospace Corporation's Corporate Chief Engineer's Office, gave a presentation about the upcoming space junk crash.
Muelhaupt pointed out that nobody has to change their lives because of this, and that 7 billion people are at risk from Chinese space debris.
Another big space-junk crash is set to happen next week.
The panel of experts made sure to note that they were not trying to overhype the event or cause panic. Muelhaupt said that you have a better chance of winning the lottery tonight than you do of being hit by the object. Six is the risk to an individual. That's a tiny number.
This incident is not the first of it's kind. The Long March 5B crashed into the Indian Ocean in July after surviving the fall through Earth's atmosphere. The Long March 5B fell into the Indian Ocean in April 2021. Pieces of the vehicle's core stage hit the ground after the rocket's debut launch.
The core stages of most rockets are designed to ditch into the ocean or over unoccupied land after liftoff, in the case of SpaceX vehicles. China allows the Long March 5B core stage to stay up until drag brings it down in a controlled manner.
More and more people are calling for the establishment of international laws to stop Chinese reentries. When it comes to reentries, international laws are unclear, according to the executive director of the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies. There are no real laws or treaties that govern what you're allowed to do in terms of reentering. There is not a direct legal way to control what is happening on an international level.
China's national space agencies and any other official government body have not responded to the tracking of and communications about falling Long March 5B rocket bodies. Muelhaupt has seen commentary about the West hyping this unnecessarily, but he doesn't know of any direct comment from the Chinese. The Chinese government made some comments in the press, but mostly not.
"Aerospace's point is just to report on what's going on, make sure that people you know are informed, they have a realistic view of what the situation is," Sorge said. There isn't much to argue with.
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