05/09/2021 12:52 AM
Clarín.com
Technology
Updated 05/09/2021 12:52 AM
The remains of the Chinese
Long March-5B Y2
rocket
spinning out of control in the atmosphere disintegrated early this Sunday over the Indian Ocean, west of the
Maldives.
This was reported by state television citing the China Manned Space Engineering Office, after several days of speculation about where the 18-ton object would fall.
The Chinese rocket was out of control since Thursday, after being launched from the Beijing space station.
"The probability of causing damage is extremely low,"
Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin had said, noting that "most of the components will be destroyed" upon entering the atmosphere.
The Long March-5B Y2 rocket, carrying the Tianhe module, taking off from the Wenchang Spaceship Launch Site in Hainan province.
(Xinhua)
US military experts had indicated in the last hours that the Long March 5B rocket
could hit the surface between Saturday 8 and Sunday 9 May
.
China on Thursday launched the first of three elements of its space station, the CSS, which was powered by a Long March 5B rocket.
And it is the body of this rocket that fell this Saturday.
After the separation of the space module, the launcher began to orbit the planet in an irregular trajectory, slowly losing height,
making almost impossible any prediction about its point of entry into the atmosphere
, and therefore its point of fall.
China had assured that the rocket would disintegrate and cause no damage.
(Xinhua)
China invested billions of dollars in its space exploration program,
aiming to reflect its growing global profile and technological might, following in the footsteps of the United States, Russia and Europe.
In this way, space became the most recent scene of confrontation between China and the United States.
China also announced plans in March to build, together with Russia, a
separate
lunar station
.
The conquest of space is the last great bet of the Asian giant.
(AFP photo)
The facility, planned for the surface or orbit of the Moon, will be equipped for experimental research and will be China's largest space cooperation project to date.
The Long March 5B rocket is not the first in which China loses control
of a space component returning to Earth.
Its Tiangong-1 space laboratory disintegrated upon re-entry into the atmosphere in 2018, two years after it ceased to function, although Chinese authorities denied losing control of the spacecraft.
With information from agencies.
Look also
Where and when the wreckage of the runaway Chinese rocket could fall
NASA's Parker probe, the fastest human-built vehicle