Look up - from Space News:
Huge rocket looks set for uncontrolled reentry following Chinese space station launch
China launched the first module for its space station into orbit late Wednesday, but the mission launcher also reached orbit and is slowly and unpredictably heading back to Earth.
The Long March 5B, a variant of China’s largest rocket, successfully launched the 22.5-metric-ton Tianhe module from Wenchang Thursday local time. Tianhe separated from the core stage of the launcher after 492 seconds of flight, directly entering its planned initial orbit.
Designed specifically to launch space station modules into low Earth orbit, the Long March 5B uniquely uses a core stage and four side boosters to place its payload directly into low Earth orbit.
However this core stage is now also in orbit and is likely to make an uncontrolled reentry over the next days or week as growing interaction with the atmosphere drags it to Earth. If so, it will be one of the largest instances of uncontrolled reentry of a spacecraft and could potentially land on an inhabited area.
Emphasis mine - yeah - about that. Usually, the agency launching the rocket makes sure that the stuff left over either falls in the ocean somewhere way out of shipping lanes or it comes back to Earth in a trajectory guaranteed to burn it up on re-entry. I guess the Chinese Communists haven't stolen that technology from Elon or NASA or the Ruskies. Yet. Class act there guys.
The last time the USA had something large deorbit uncontrolled, it was SkyLab back in July 11, 1979. 41+ years ago.
Leave a comment