BEIJING, KOMPAS.com – Roket China named Long March 5B will fall uncontrollably onto Earth and risk hitting uninhabited areas.
Roket Long March 5B it is the first thrust module to build a Chinese space station.
News agency AFP on Friday (7/5/2021) proclaimed that this rocket would not fall due to technical errors, but that it was designed that way.
Also read: China’s Long March 5B rocket crashes uncontrollably into Earth’s atmosphere this week
From low Earth orbit, this rocket is pulled gradually by gravity to the surface of the planet.
Such objects will usually rub against the hot atmosphere as they approach Earth, but size roket China it is so large that it weighs 18 tonnes, so it is unlikely that it will completely burn.
“Given the size of the object, there will definitely be a large chunk left,” said Florent Delefie, an astronomer at the Paris-PSL Observatory.
“If the rocket consists of material that doesn’t separate upon re-entry, that’s even more risky. That seems to be the case for the Long March 5B,” he added.
Meanwhile, Nicolas Bobrinsky head of engineering and innovation at the European Space Agency (ESA) explained, China should anticipate a controlled re-entry by retro rocket.
“This was done by the Russians when they moved the Mir station from Earth orbit,” said Bobrinsky.
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Possible scenario of the fall of the China Long March 5B rocket
The China Long March 5 rocket launched a mission to return the sample of the Chang’e 5 moon to orbit from the Wenchang Space Shuttle Launch Site on Hainan Island in southern China on November 24, 2020 Beijing time. (Image credit: China’s National Space Administration)-Given the height of the orbital rocket between 150-250 kilometers, the re-entry of the object to Earth is very difficult to anticipate.
“We can’t really say exactly when that’s going to happen,” Bobrinsky said, because lower levels in the atmosphere are more susceptible to density variations.
Until Friday night European time, it is estimated that re-entry will occur between 21.00 GMT Saturday (8/5/2021) to 07.00 GMT Sunday (9/5/2021), or Sunday at 04.00 WIB until 14.00 WIB.
“But even an hour before the impact, the level of uncertainty will be high,” continued Bobrinsky.
One thing is for sure that the booster rocket orbits at an inclination to the equator of about 41 degrees.
This means that any debris would fall within 41 degrees North and 41 degrees South covering the tropics.
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Greece, Spain and North Africa fall within the scope of the zone, including most of the United States and China. France and Germany are beyond it.
The most likely landing zone is water, because nearly three-quarters of the planet’s surface is covered in oceans.
“The chances of debris falling in the populated zone are very small, maybe one in a million,” Delefie said.
In comparison, meteorites can fall to Earth at speeds of 36,000 km / hr.
Also read: China says the damage from the rocket that will fall uncontrollably is very small
Has the China Long March 5B rocket case happened before?
In 2020 debris from another Long March rocket fell in Ivory Coast villages, causing structural damage but no injuries or deaths.
Since the Soviet Union’s launch of the first satellite in 1957, tons of booster rockets, satellites and other objects have been sent into space.
NASA estimates that there are about 34,000 objects with a minimum diameter of 10 cm circling the Earth at this time.
Since the start of space exploration more than 60 years ago, about 6,000 objects reentered Earth’s atmosphere out of control, but there has been only one case of debris hitting humans.
Even so, this did not result in injury, according to ESA expert Stijn Lemmens.
Also read: Chinese rocket will glide uncontrollably to Earth, this is the approximate location of the fall
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