NASA condemns China for rocket debris — RT World News

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson criticized China for not sharing “specific trajectory information” about a booster rocket that streaked through Earth’s atmosphere in the Indian Ocean on Saturday.

China’s Long March 5B rocket re-entered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean on Saturday, breaking apart as it hurtled towards earth. The rocket was launched last Sunday to deliver a module to China’s Tiangong space station before falling back to Earth.

“The People’s Republic of China did not share specific information about the trajectory when its Long March 5B rocket fell back to Earth,” Nelson tweeted, adding that “all space nations” should share this information “to enable reliable predictions of potential debris impact risk, particularly for heavy-lift vehicles like the Long March 5B which carry a significant risk of loss of life and property.”

“This is essential for the responsible use of space and for keeping people safe here on Earth,” Nelson concluded.

The Long March 5B core stage is not jettisoned before the rocket leaves the atmosphere, as is the case with some Western and Russian rockets. Instead, the Long March’s core, which weighs about 22.5 metric tons, falls from orbit intact, with between five and nine metric tons of debris surviving the fall to Earth, according to Aerospace Corp, a center research funded by the US government.

Debris from a long 5B march fell across Ivory Coast in 2020, with local media reporting that metal objects that did not burn up in the atmosphere were found on the ground. This and other re-entry of China’s Long March rockets have raised concerns in the West, but Beijing has pointed out that most of its debris disintegrates or lands in the oceans, posing a problem. “extremely low” risk to anyone or anything on the ground.

China has also hit back at Western double standards over space debris, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying reminding NASA last year that when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket pressure vessel fell on a man’s farm in Washington State, “The American media used romantic words like ‘shooting stars to light up the night sky’ and ‘dazzling light show’.”

Shortly before the Long March 5B splashed down in the Indian Ocean, an observer in Malaysia captured video that supposedly shows it tracing a trail of fire across the sky.