World News:The remaining of a Chinese broken rocket named Long March 5B, whose space debris was anticipated to fall back to earth last week, crash landed near the West coast of Maldives on Indian Ocean. It was speculated that the debris falling down may weigh as much as 18 tons.
The debris crash landed at co-ordinates bearing 72.47 East longitude and 2.65 North Latitude which was identified to be near the Maldives. Although weighing heavy and crashing down at ocean surface causing no damage to property or life, China was criticized heavily by NASA for being irresponsible about uncontrolled entry of such large-scale debris.
The debris of the rocket Long March 5B, entered the Earth’s atmosphere at (10:24 A.M EDT) (02:24 GMT). The rocket was launched from Hainan Islands, China last week on April 29th and ever since it was expected that the debris of the rocket will come back to earth.
Though such falling space debris gets destroyed by fire due to friction while entering earth’s atmosphere, large chunks of the debris still were not burned and descended on to Earth. Similarly, the first rocket of the 5B series that was launched last year in 2020, whose debris crash landed in a village of the country of Ivory Coast in Western Africa. Although it damaged several buildings, no damage or loss of life happened luckily.
US Space Agency NASA and US Armed Forces’ Space Command kept track of the falling debris throughout last week. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson voiced their concerns regarding the uncontrolled entry of the space debris.
Bill Nelson said in a statement that such leading space-faring nations must ensure that the aftermath of their space operations must have little to no damage to life or property back in Earth and must maintain transparency regarding those operations and accused China of failing to meet those standards of ensuring safety.
According to John McDowell, a Harvard based astronomer the debris of the rocket Long March 5B are the fourth largest objects in history to have entered the Earth in such uncontrollable fashion.
In July of 1979, when the debris of U.S Space station Skylab uncontrollably entered the atmosphere and crash landed in Australia, space agencies that design such rockets or space vehicles made sure with their designs that such incidents of dangerous debris crashing onto Earth’s surface are to the minimal and safe.
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