Chinese rocket comes down safely in Indian Ocean

Re-entry without apparent damage follows criticism of ‘reckless’ approach

The remnants of China’s Long March 5B rocket splashed down in the Indian Ocean near the Maldives yesterday morning with no immediate reports of damage or casualties, ending an anxious week as people and governments wondered where and when the space junk would fall.

The China Manned Space Engineering Office said the “great majority” of the debris burned up as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, while the rest landed in an open sea area in the Indian Ocean, close to the Maldives.

Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, from the Harvard & Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in the United States, tweeted that “it appears China won its gamble (unless we get news of debris in the Maldives). But it was still reckless”.

Space-Track.org tweeted that the 18 Space Control Squadron, an American operation that detects and monitors artificial objects in Earth’s orbit, confirmed that the remnants of the Long March 5B had fallen into the Indian Ocean.

The US Space Command last week said it was tracking the rocket and that the 18th Space Control Squadron was offering “daily updates to the rocket body’s location” via Space-Track.

“That’s all we have on this reentry; thanks for the wild ride and 30K more followers. Good night!” Space-Track tweeted yesterday.

The outcome largely confirmed Beijing’s prediction that the rocket was unlikely to cause any harm when it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

Foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said last Friday that atmospheric burn-up made “the likelihood of damage to aviation or ground facilities and activities extremely low”.

But China’s efforts to ease global concerns did not stop the return of the rocket grabbing headlines around the world.

Last year, fragments of a similar Long March mission fell on the Ivory Coast, damaging several buildings, though no one was hurt.

The latest rocket was launched last week, carrying the core module for China’s Tiangong Space Station, from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on the southern island province of Hainan.

The large rocket stage that fell from space was more than 33 metres tall and weighed more than 20 tonnes, making it the sixth largest object to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere, according to the Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research organisation based in California.

Very little of the rocket stage’s mass survived re-entry, however, with the majority having burned up as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of about 8km per second.

Beijing’s space programme has drawn criticism from aerospace analysts and governments, including Washington, for allowing an uncontrolled re-entry of such a large rocket body.

“For those of us who operate in the space domain … there should be a requirement to operate in a safe and thoughtful mode, and make sure that we take those kinds of things into consideration as we plan and conduct operations,” US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said last Thursday.

Commonly, rocket stages are jettisoned closer to the Earth before they reach orbit, allowing for a more predictable trajectory as they fall. For those that do reach orbit, they can be equipped with additional engine firing capacity, allowing for a point of entry to be chosen that would steer any falling debris away from populated areas.

China opted for neither of those options with the Long March, leaving the depleted rocket stage in an elliptical orbit with no control capabilities.

The country’s space programme faced criticism last year, when a Long March mission saw debris showered over northern Africa after a similar uncontrolled re-entry. US space agency Nasa’s then administrator, Jim Bridenstine, called the re-entry “really dangerous” and said it was lucky nobody was injured.

Yesterday’s impending reentry had renewed attention to congestion in space, where there are believed to be more than 2,000 rocket bodies, all technically uncontrolled, orbiting Earth.

Of those, 1,035 are Russian, including some from the Soviet era, and 546 belong to the United States, according to CelesTrak, a group that monitors orbital objects. China’s space programme trails behind at 170 bodies.

Rocket bodies constitute just a fraction of all objects in orbit. Nasa estimates there to be some 20,000 pieces of debris larger than a softball orbiting the Earth, and about half a million pieces bigger than a marble. While small, their high velocities mean they can cause severe damage upon collision with satellites and other spacecraft.

That’s all we have on this re-entry; thanks for the wild ride A TWEET FROM SPACE-TRACK.ORG