Long March Five B:
When and where is China's 21-ton uncontrollable space rocket likely to land?
(Another Disaster Ready In – 2021)
An uncontrolled
Chinese rocket orbiting the Earth is about to enter Earth's atmosphere in the
coming days and scientists do not know where it will land.
It should be noted
that since 1990, no machine or rocket weighing more than 10 tons has been
deliberately left in the Earth's orbit so that it falls out of control and
falls to the ground. But in the next few days, the 21-tonne Long March Five B rocket will be one of the largest rockets to land.
The rocket is 98 feet
long and 16 feet wide and was planned to launch China's new space station into
orbit at the end of April. It is currently moving towards Earth at a speed of
27,060 km per hour.
Jonathan Amos, a
scientist, says it is moving toward a zone 41 degrees north and south of the
equator. In the north, it extends to New York, Istanbul and Beijing, and in the
south to Wellington and Chile.
"If you live
further north or south of this zone or area, it cannot fall on you, and if you
live in this zone and it is close to the equator, it can still fall on
you," he said. Is very unlikely. 70% of the earth is covered with water,
so if it survives after the fire enters the earth's atmosphere, it is more
likely to fall into the water.
In response, the US
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Thursday that the Pentagon was
monitoring China's unmanned rocket but hoped it would land in a place where it
would not harm anyone.
"We have the latent
to do a lot, but at the moment we have no plans to shoot down a Chinese
rocket," he said in his first press conference since taking office.
However, the Secretary of
Defense Austin added: "Not knowing at this point when and where the rocket
will land draws attention to the fact that those of us who work in space must
be safe and responsible." ۔
'
"We also want to
develop a strategy for clearing space debris," he said.
When the Long March Five B was last
launched from China in May 2020, there were reports of wreckage falling on the
West African country of Ivory Coast, including a 39-foot-long metal pipe.
However, no injuries were reported.
Scientists hope the
rocket will land on May 10. The error in this prediction is two days, meaning
it could fall two days later or earlier than scheduled, and scientists know
this up to an hour before it falls. It doesn't matter where it falls.
An astrograph map,
created with US government funding, tracks man-made parts or machines in space.
There are currently a total of 26,000 parts in space.
Professor Moriba Jah,
an aerospace engineer at the University of Texas, is working on the project.
"They diverge in size, from smartphones to space stations, and maybe about
3,500 satellites, the rest is rubbish," she said.
As the second half of
the twentieth century saw an increase in space missions, so did the debris in
space, i.e., inefficient machinery or parts, endangering functional satellites.
There are currently about 200 large parts in space, including rocket fragments,
and according to Professor Jah, "they are like time bombs."
"Active
satellites that give us space, navigation, timing, technology related to
financial transactions, environmental warnings can become inactive at any time
by colliding with any of these components," he said. If we lose these
resources in space, it will have a profound effect on humanity.
The Chinese rocket
can also be found on the Austria graph and its name is CZ5B.
It revolves around
the earth in 90 minutes, but it is difficult to estimate the flight of any
falling rocket because of the various changing things that have to be
calculated moment by moment.
Scientists are
currently monitoring the rate of its fall and expect it to enter the Earth's
atmosphere soon.