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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Heads Up! Huge rocket looks set for uncontrolled reentry following Chinese space station launch |
| 2021-05-01 |
| [SpaceNews] China launched the first module for its space station into orbit late Wednesday, but the mission launcher also reached orbit and is slowly and unpredictably heading back to Earth. The Long March 5B, a variant of China’s largest rocket, successfully launched the 22.5-metric-ton Tianhe module from Wenchang Thursday local time. Tianhe separated from the core stage of the launcher after 492 seconds of flight, directly entering its planned initial orbit. Designed specifically to launch space station modules into low Earth orbit, the Long March 5B uniquely uses a core stage and four side boosters to place its payload directly into low Earth orbit. However this core stage is now also in orbit and is likely to make an uncontrolled reentry over the next days or week as growing interaction with the atmosphere drags it to Earth. If so, it will be one of the largest instances of uncontrolled reentry of a spacecraft and could potentially land on an inhabited area. Most expendable rocket first stages do not reach orbital velocity and reenter the atmosphere and land in a pre-defined reentry zone. Some other larger, second stages perform deorbit burns to lower altitude to reduce time in orbit and lower chances of collisions with other spacecraft or to immediately reenter the atmosphere. There had been speculation that the Long March 5B core would perform an active maneuver to deorbit itself, but that appears not to have happened. At a Wenchang press conference Thursday, Wang Jue, Commander-in-Chief of Long March 5B launch vehicle, stated (Chinese) that this second Long March 5B had seen improvements over the first launch, but a possible deorbit maneuver was not stated. Ground based radars used by the U.S. military to track spacecraft and other objects in space have detected an object and catalogued it as the Long March 5B rocket body. Now designated 2021-035B, the roughly 30-meter-long, five-meter-wide Long March 5 core stage is in a 170 by 372-kilometer altitude orbit traveling at more than seven kilometers per second. |
| Posted by:Frank G |
| #8 No worries as the Chinese have Ping and Pong working up a solution. |
| Posted by: crazyhorse 2021-05-01 23:12 |
| #7 Maybe the chit they stole had some bad info? |
| Posted by: BrerRabbit 2021-05-01 17:32 |
| #6 /\ Beautiful, P2K, simply gorgeous! Thank you for sharing. |
| Posted by: magpie 2021-05-01 13:37 |
| #5 Awesome link P2K, thank you. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2021-05-01 13:19 |
| #4 ...and interesting perspective, Rocket Launch as Seen from the Space Station. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2021-05-01 11:19 |
| #3 Wonderful. I'm reminded of a proposal to preserve the Shuttle hydrogen tanks stored in a collection of reconditioned or emergency habitats at a Lagrange point. "Off MISSION!" I was loudly told. "Orbital MAINTENANCE!" Uhm, deorbit burns...to L4/5? "Toxic RESIDUAL!" More toxic than empty SPACE? The conversation ended with: "Hey MAC! Have you got a spot for this guy?" "Yeah, we'll send him on a walkabout to watch launches." |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2021-05-01 10:52 |
| #2 I always thought it was a pity to deorbit resources, and the booster could be used for something in the future, that cost so much to lift into orbit... |
| Posted by: magpie 2021-05-01 10:20 |
| #1 The Long March 5B core stage’s orbital inclination of 41.5 degrees means the rocket body passes a little farther north than New York, Madrid and Beijing and as far south as southern Chile and Wellington, New Zealand, and could make its reentry at any point within this area. Like DC? |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2021-05-01 09:55 |