![]() ![]() There is an international legal framework based on treaties from the 1960s and ’70s in which a country can demand payment for damage caused by another country’s falling rocket. What would happen if space debris hit something? The 77-ton station mostly broke up over the Indian Ocean, but debris scattered across Western Australia. The American Skylab, which operated in 19, broke up as NASA scientists tried to guide its descent in 1979. Nelson, the NASA administrator, said in his statement, “Spacefaring nations must minimize the risks to people and property on Earth of re-entries of space objects and maximize transparency regarding those operations.”Īnd earlier in the history of spaceflight, the first space powers had uncontrolled re-entries of their own. In recent decades, rocket stages that reach orbit typically fire the engine again after releasing their payloads so that they drop out of orbit, aimed at an unoccupied area like the middle of an ocean.Ĭhina did not elect to do that for this launch, and so that large booster headed back uncontrollably. (Disposing of used, unwanted rocket pieces in the ocean is a common practice.) But the core booster stage - a 10-story cylinder weighing 23 tons empty - carried the Tianhe module into orbit. Several smaller side boosters dropped off shortly after the launch, crashing harmlessly in the Pacific Ocean. The full rocket contained multiple pieces. The country’s space program needed a large, powerful vehicle to carry Tianhe, the main module of Tiangong, the new space station, which is to be operational by 2022 after more pieces are launched and connected in orbit. Long March 5B is China’s largest rocket, and one of the largest currently in use by any nation. What is the rocket and what was it launching? “It appears China won its gamble (unless we get news of debris in the Maldives),” he wrote. Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who tracks the comings and goings of objects in space, said on Twitter that an ocean splashdown had always been the most likely outcome, but that the episode raised questions about how China designs its space missions. The Maldives government had no immediate response to China’s announcement. People in Israel and Oman reported sightings of the rocket debris on social media. Because of friction caused by the rocket rubbing against air at the top of the atmosphere, it soon began losing altitude, making what is called “uncontrolled re-entry” back to Earth inevitable.Ĭhina’s space administration, which had said nothing about uncontrolled re-entry until Sunday, announced that the debris had entered Earth’s atmosphere over the Mediterranean before flying over the Middle East and coming down near the Maldives, south of India.
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