Space experts are following part of a Russian rocket in uncontrolled fall in the Earth’s atmosphere. The heavy rocket Angara-A5 was launched from the Plesetsk spaceport in the northwestern Arkhangelsk region of Russia on Monday, December 27. The launch was testing a new upper stage of the rocket, known as the Persei booster, according to the state news agency TAS, cited by CNN.
Most space debris burns upon reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, but it is possible that larger parts can cause damage if they land in inhabited regions. “It is safe to say that in the next 24 hours it will be down but where, no one can tell, because in the window of several hours it will make several revolutions around the world“Holger Krag, head of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Debris Office, told CNN this morning. Part of the Russian rocket was traveling at 7.5 kilometers per second and its reentry latitude was likely between 63 degrees north and south of the equator, Krag said.
US Space Command confirmed in a statement that it was “aware and that it is tracking the position of the body of the Angara A5 / PERSEY rocket in space”, Evaluating the point of entry into the Earth’s atmosphere on the South Pacific Ocean. The return window was estimated to be around 22 Italian, with about an hour of uncertainty. This means that the rocket should have already crashed: however, it will take hours to know the exact position in which it fell.
Risk level
While it is highly unlikely that it will cause harm or injure anyone, “The risk is real and cannot be ignored“Said Krag. In May 2021, NASA harshly criticized China for its failure in “Meet responsible standardsAfter debris from an out of control rocket used to launch the Chinese space station plunged into the Indian Ocean.
Part of the Russian rocket is believed to be smaller than Chinese debris, weighing about 4 tons without fuel, compared to about 20 tons on the Chinese Long March 5B rocket, Krag said. The Chinese Long March rocket was one of the largest objects in recent memory to hit Earth after it went out of orbit, after a 2018 crash in which a piece of a Chinese space laboratory broke over the Pacific Ocean and re-entered. in 2020 of another Long March 5B rocket.
The Persei booster was about 10 meters long compared to China’s 32-meter Long March 5B rocket, said Jonathan McDowell, astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics – Harvard & Smithsonian. Although it weighed less, it carried about 16 tons of propellant on board, he said. The “total mass is about the same as the Chinese stage, but most of it is likely liquid and will burn in the atmosphere, so the risk to the soil is significantly less, I believeMcDowell said.
McDowell added that the Russian rocket stage was not intended to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere like this: “it had to end up in an orbit in which it would remain for many thousands of years. The rocket was unable to restart ”.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos told CNN that the launch was operated by the Russian Defense Ministry.
The international best practice for rocket or spacecraft parts at the end of their life is typically to make a controlled reentry and fall to Earth in an uninhabited area, usually a remote part of the Pacific Ocean, Krag said. Krag added that, on average, 100 to 200 tons of space junk re-enters Earth’s atmosphere uncontrollably each year. Only one person is known to have been hit by space debris: a woman named Lottie Williams in Texas in 1997 who survived.
Big piece of a Russian rocket crashed on Earth, “return of Persei confirmed”
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