On December 27, 2021, a Russian Angara A5 rocket is going to be launched. The rocket, carrying a dummy payload, reached low Earth orbit, but an upper-stage engine failure prevented it from going higher as planned, according to media reports. The Russian Ministry of Defense has an image.
The space junk population has gotten smaller.
The upper stage of a Russian rocket crashed back to Earth in an uncontrollable fashion today, hitting the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean. The time is 2108 GMT.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and satellite tracker based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said that Persei reentered over the South Pacific.
An empty patch of sea east of French Polynesia is the latitude/longitude location.
The fall ended nine days after the test flight of Persei. The second engine burn that was supposed to send Persei from low Earth to a higher altitude was not able to happen.
The biggest spaceship to fall from space.
It was a large piece of space debris. Most of the weight was propellant, which weighed in at about 21.5 tons. Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb.com said that the chunk that fell back to Earth probably tipped the scales at around 3.5 tons.
Most of the rocket body burned up in the atmosphere today, according to the data analyzed by McDowell. If any pieces came down over terra firma, don't expect to find any giant, smoking craters.
"Any damage from surviving debris will be minor (it might dent some poor person's roof, but it won't wipe out humanity)," wrote the author.
He was responding to a follower who asked if the comet crash would be like the film "Don't Look Up", which tells the story of two astronomer who try to warn people about a comet. The incoming comet is a metaphor for climate change and humanity's slow response to it.
The core stage of a Chinese Long March 5B booster came down after 10 days in Earth's atmosphere, in a controversial example of a big space junk fall.
The core module for China's new space station was lofted by the Long March 5B. The rocket's core stage made it all the way to the moon instead of diving into the ocean as first-stage boosters do on most launches. The controversy is what it is.
The Angara A5 development has been plagued by a series of delays. The first two launches of the heavy lifter, which took place in December of 2014 and December of 2020, both succeeded in delivering dummy payloads.
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