U.S. Space Command said the Long March 5B rocket https://twitter.com/US_SpaceCom/status/1553436525404323842?s=20&t=mf5h5254uF1lLyPbFO0acg made its reentry over the Indian Ocean around 12:45 p.m. EDT Saturday (1645 GMT), but referred China questions regarding “the technical aspects of the reentry, such as the location of the potential impact of scattering of debris”.
“All space nations should follow established best practices and do their part to share this type of information in advance to enable reliable predictions of potential impact hazard from debris,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. . “Doing so is essential for the responsible use of space and for keeping people safe here on Earth.”
Social media users in Malaysia posted a video of what appeared to be rocket debris.
Aerospace Corp, a government-funded nonprofit research center near Los Angeles, said it was unwise to let the rocket’s main stage – which weighs 22.5 tonnes (about 48,500 lbs) – return on Earth during an uncontrolled reentry.
Earlier this week, analysts said the rocket body would disintegrate as it plunged through the atmosphere, but is large enough for many pieces to survive a fiery re-entry and rain debris down on an area of some 2,000 km long by about 70 km wide.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately comment. China said earlier this week it would closely monitor the debris, but said it posed little risk to people on the ground.
The Long March 5B exploded on July 24 to deliver a laboratory module of China’s new space station under construction into orbit, marking the third flight of China’s most powerful rocket since its maiden launch in 2020.
Fragments of another Chinese Long March 5B landed in Ivory Coast in 2020, damaging several buildings in the West African nation, although no injuries were reported.
By contrast, he said, the United States and most other spacefaring nations typically go to extra expense to design their rockets to avoid large, uncontrolled re-entries — a widely observed imperative ever since large chunks of the NASA’s Skylab space station fell from orbit in 1979 and landed in Australia.
Last year, NASA and other agencies accused China of being opaque after the Beijing government remained silent on the estimated trajectory of debris or the re-entry window of its last Long March rocket flight in May 2021.
The debris from that flight ended up landing safely in the Indian Ocean.