The Chinese rocket stage will land much sooner than expected, according to the latest calculations.
According to the most recent projections, the Chinese rocket stage, which is irrationally orbiting the earth, will likely crash into the planet as soon as this Friday.
The core stage of a Long March 5B rocket, weighing 23 tons (21 metric tons), was launched into low Earth orbit on October 31 alongside the third and final module for China’s Tiangong space station.
Since then, atmospheric drag has been lowering the rocket body. The Long March 5B should come down on Friday morning, according to the most recent observations and simulations, although the error bars on that prediction are still very wide.
According to The Aerospace Corporation, an atmospheric reentry is expected to occur on Friday at 7:20 a.m. EDT (1120 a.m. GMT), plus or minus three hours. In that wide span, among other places, some of North America, almost all of Central America, most of Africa, and a portion of southeastern Australia might be in the path of falling space debris.
Our latest prediction for #CZ5B rocket body reentry is:
— The Aerospace Corporation (@AerospaceCorp) November 3, 2022
🚀04 Nov 2022 11:20 UTC ± 3 hours
Reentry will be along one of the ground tracks shown here. It is still too early to determine a meaningful debris footprint. Follow here for updates: https://t.co/KZZ9LgLk0k pic.twitter.com/GlnE8C0Iok
Although the precise location of the rocket’s landing is unknown, The Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit research organization supported by the United States government and based in California, claims that the possible debris field includes the United States, Central and South America, Africa, India, China, Southeast Asia, and Australia.
This is the fourth time in the last two years that China has thrown away rockets without a plan. In the previous crash landings, metal objects fell on villages in the Ivory Coast, debris landed in the Indian Ocean near the Maldives, and rocket pieces crashed dangerously close to villages in Borneo.
According to The Aerospace Corporation, the likelihood that someone may be hurt by a falling rocket is low (varying from 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 230), and the risk to single individuals is even lower (between 1 in 10 trillion and 1 in 6 trillion).
Nevertheless, because the rocket’s debris path passes over around 88% of the world’s population, the likelihood of harm is much higher than the generally acknowledged 1 in 10,000 casualty risk threshold for uncontrolled reentries.