You might have heard that everything you throw up has to come down. But what if it happens to be one of the biggest rockets your country has launched in space? What if it started coming back from where it has been launched? That would cause a little worry, won’t it?
The large Chinese rocket that is out of control and is all set to reenter the earth’s atmosphere has caused such a similar alarming situation for all the humans around the globe.
The Long March 5B after launching has entered a temporary orbit, resulting possibly for one of the largest ever uncontrolled reentries in the earth’s atmosphere. Since the weekend it has dropped near 80km in altitude and the observations have shown that it’s tumbling and is out of control.
From 1990 not anything over 10 tonnes has been purposefully left in orbit to re-enter uncontrolled. However, the Long March 5B core is somewhat around 21 tonnes.
The Long March 5B is likely to enter the orbit around May 8, 2021.
According to a statement from Defense Department spokesperson Mike Howard, “The rocket’s exact entry point into the Earth’s atmosphere can’t be pinpointed until within hours of reentry.”
“We expect it to reenter sometime between the 8th and 10th of May. And in that two-day period, it goes around the world 30 times. The thing is traveling at like 18,000 miles an hour. And so if you’re an hour out at guessing when it comes down, you’re 18,000 miles out in saying where.”
“The risk that there will be some damage or that it would hit someone is pretty small — not negligible, it could happen — but the risk that it will hit you is incredibly tiny. And so I would not lose one second of sleep over this on a personal threat basis,” said Jonathan McDowell, Astrophysicist at the Astrophysics Center at Harvard University.
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