Everyone look up!
It seems like we will all be looking up for the foreseeable future as a Chinese rocket is falling to earth that scientists can not track or designate its landing point.
The Wentian space station launched on Sunday to dock with the Tiangong space station 400 kilometres above the planet. A 21-ton rocket stage was left up there to do its own thing and should fall to earth over the next decade. The only issue is that scientists don’t know when or where.
Speaking to Gizmodo via email, Jonathan McDowell from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said that, typically speaking, American space launches tend to do a better job at “upper stage disposal” compared to China.
“Unfortunately we can’t predict when or where,” he said. “Such a large rocket stage should not be left in orbit to make an uncontrolled reentry; the risk to the public is not huge, but it is larger than I am comfortable with.”
Two objects cataloged from the CZ-5B launch: 53239 / 2022-085A in a 166 x 318 km x 41.4 deg orbit, 53240 / 2022-085B in a 182 x 299 km x 41.4 deg orbit. Orbital epoch of ~1200 UTC confirms that the inert 21t rocket core stage remains in orbit and was not actively deorbited.
— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) July 24, 2022
The odds of the rocket hitting a populated area are low, but that’s not because the planet has a great defence system for such occurrences. The chances are so small because the earth is 80 per cent water, but still, it’s not impossible.
The experts believe there is a 10 per cent chance that one of more casualties will be caused by the debris over the next decade.
This is not the first time China has littered space, and earlier this year, it dumped part of the Tianhe space station at such speeds that it moved around the earth once every 90-minutes. Scientists were also unable to track it.
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