Rocket parts fall “uncontrollably” towards earth: China rejects danger - experts warn

Debris from a Chinese launcher falls “uncontrollably” towards earth.

Western experts warn.

China is now rejecting a danger.

Beijing - China has an ambitious plan: to build its own station in space.

Last Thursday (April 29th) a rocket of the type “Long March 5B” brought the core module “Tianhe” (Heavenly Harmony) into space.

Debris from the launch vehicle threatens to fall to earth in the next few days.

Space experts have been warning for days of an "uncontrolled re-entry" of parts weighing tons when entering the earth's atmosphere.

The main rocket stage weighs 20 tons.

China: Space experts warn of debris from space

The design of the missile of the type "Long March 5B" is responsible for the uncontrolled reentry. The launcher is built in such a way that it simply re-enters the earth's atmosphere at an arbitrary location by virtue of its gravitational pull. Experts accuse China of not adhering to today's standards. It is "negligent".

“We don't know where,” the astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told the dpa news agency on Tuesday.

"In the worst case scenario, it will be like a small plane crashing and spreading over hundreds of kilometers," said McDowell.

It is uncertain how many fragments of the debris will be left after re-entry.

“But enough to cause damage,” the astrophysicist was certain.

During the first flight of the “Langer Marsch 5B” launcher, debris damaged several houses on the Ivory Coast.

That was in May 2020.

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China wants to build its own space station: the Langer-Marsch-5B-Y2 launcher has brought the core module “Tianhe” (Heavenly Harmony) into space.

© Anonymous / CCTV via AP Video / dpa

Missile debris threat - China's state media give the all-clear

China is now rejecting the danger of falling rocket debris.

The fragments are "very likely to fall into international waters, and people needn't worry," wrote the

Global Times

newspaper, often serving as an English-language propaganda organ,

on Thursday, referring to space experts. 

The fact that the remains of rockets fell back to earth was "common in the aerospace industry," wrote the

Global Times

.

The paper saw behind the warnings "nothing more than Western hype about a 'threat from China'" in space technology.

The expert Wang Ya'nan, editor-in-chief of an aerospace magazine, was quoted as saying that China's space agencies had carefully considered the development of falling debris, from the design of the rocket and the choice of launch site to its flight path and altitude.

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Danger from the world dream: China rejects worries about the wreckage of its missile.

© Ju Zhenhua / via AP / dpa

Debris burns up when it re-enters the earth's atmosphere

"Most of the debris will burn when it re-enters the earth's atmosphere, leaving only a very small part that falls to the earth, which will potentially end up in areas far away from human activity or in the ocean," said Wang Ya'nan.

According to the

Global Times

,

experts also stated

that the rocket stage was built primarily from lightweight material that usually just burns on reentry.

China: Tiangong Space Station (Sky Palace)

China lost control of the Chinese space laboratory Tiangong 1 (Heavenly Palace) in 2018.

For a long time, it was unclear where the debris, weighing up to 100 kilograms, entered the earth's atmosphere, as

Merkur.de *

reported.

The orbit of Tiangong 1 was then tracked around the world.

The Tiangong 1 space laboratory represents China's plans to build its own space station.

The space station "Tiangong" (Heavenly Palace) should be completed "around 2022".

From the space station in Wenchang, modules are brought into space with launch vehicles of the “Long March 5B” type.

If the technically obsolete international space station ISS goes out of service as planned in the coming years, China would be the only nation with a permanent outpost in space.

(dpa / ml) * Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA

List of rubric lists: © Anonymous / CCTV via AP Video / dpa