Long March 5B, one of China’s largest rockets launched a 22.5-metric-ton Tianhe module from Wenchang. And the Tianhe separation was 8 minutes in flight.
The rocket was made to launch space station modules into orbit. Its unique design uses a core stage and four side boosters to drop its payload directly into low Earth orbit.
After getting the module successfully into low Earth orbit the core stage was trapped. It was unable to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. And couldn’t land in a target re-entry zone.
Most expendable rocket first stages do not reach orbital velocity. And they reenter the atmosphere to land in a pre-defined reentry zone. Some larger, second-stages perform deorbit burns to a lower altitude. This reduces time in orbit and lowers the chance of collisions with other spacecraft.
New Long March 5B reentry prediction for the Aerospace Corporation for 03:43 UTC May 9 ± 16 hours (11:43 8 May -19:43 9 May). https://t.co/19yy3OxAeu https://t.co/h24FkuHo1d pic.twitter.com/tO4iML9T69
— Andrew Jones (@AJ_FI) May 6, 2021
Space Experts closely follow the event
Holger Krag, European Space Agency head of the Space Safety Programme, says it is estimated that an average of about 100 tons of space junk re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere on an annual basis. He claims “This relates to about 50-60 individual events per year.”
