When SpaceX, under Elon Musk, launches a rocket, it lands its booster system back onto the launch pad, which ends up saving hundreds of millions of dollars — and possibly lives as well.
However, China gives no such regard. The communist nation just recently launched its own massive rocket, and there was no one tracking just where its booster is slated to crash land.
This past Sunday, China launched into space its rocket dubbed Long March 5B from an area along the southern island province of Hainan. This rocket sported a payload of an experimental solar-powered new lab that will be stitched onto is Tiangong Space Station.
The booster is massive, being more than 175 feet tall and weighing well over 1.8 million pounds. Space experts are now concerned that the debris from its core stage may not end up fully disintegrating as it makes its way back into Earth’s atmosphere.
The rocket disengaged its 46,000-pound first stage in space, which means it will end up orbiting the Earth for an unknown amount time, which will end with the booster falling back into the atmosphere. While many experts do not think it will end up landing in an inhabited area, its actual landing area is still unknown.
in the wake of the communist country launching a similar rocket back in May, the booster ended up crashing into the Indian Ocean. However, Bill Nelson, a NASA Administrator, hurled criticism about the launch, claiming that China was “failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris.”
“Spacefaring nations must minimize the risks to people and property on Earth of re-entries of space objects and maximize transparency regarding those operations,” Nelson stated via a short statement posted on the website for NASA.
“It is critical that China and all spacefaring nations and commercial entities act responsibly and transparently in space to ensure the safety, stability, security, and long-term sustainability of outer space activities,” stated Nelson.
With that particular rocket, many projections highlighted that the booster could end up crashing down anywhere from Africa to North America, but once again, experts thought it would end up in an ocean.
One spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, Wang Wenbin, stated that space engineers were tracking its re-entry.
“To my knowledge, the upper stage of this rocket has been deactivated, which means that most of its parts will burn up upon re-entry, making the likelihood of damage to aviation or ground facilities and activities extremely low,” he stated, as stated in an official transcript.
In the run-up to the most recent launch, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, Jonathan McDowell, wrote via social media that he hoped that China had created a new system that would allow for the core stage to be actively deorbited instead of just randomly plummeting back to Earth.
He claimed that the booster “was passivated for safe reentry. Not enough to passivate, have to do it in a controlled way that actually deorbits it. Maybe they’ll do that this time though — I hope so.”