An alarm has been raised in Europe about the fall of a 23-tonne, 10-storey-high Chinese rocket fragment that will fall uncontrollably to Earth today or tomorrow.
Spain closes airports
Spain closed airspace over several of its airports on Friday due to the missile crash. In particular, airspace over Barcelona, Tarragona, Reus and Ibiza airports was temporarily closed on Friday, according to reports.
⚠️Update: the re-entry window of #CZ5B has narrowed down to 2022-11-04 10:49:35 UTC ±223 min. #EUSST contributing sensors keep monitoring the object closely & Operations Centres are performing analyses. Stay tuned for more updates. Read more: https://t.co/9X1lBmRJIS #LongMarch5B pic.twitter.com/mqldyRHJxH
- EUSST (@EU_SST) November 3, 2022
Chinese rocket section
It is a large part of the Chinese rocket Long March 5B, which is still spinning, like a Russian roulette wheel, around the Earth at this hour. The rocket is the one that orbited the third and final segment of China's new Tianyong space station on Oct. 31.
As had happened with previous launches of the same heavy-lift rocket, China's space agency did not carry out a controlled fall of the remaining part of the rocket after it had released its payload.
Although much of the rocket will be burned up by the atmosphere before it reaches Earth, some of it eventually - 20% to 40% - is expected to fall to Earth, possibly into the sea covering 70% of our planet. It is estimated that about 88% of the world's population lives in the potential fallout areas, but experts however pointed out that the chances of being hit by the huge «debris» are just six in 10 trillion.
In July this year, a 5.5 to 10-tonne Long March 5B rocket fragment crashed in the Indian Ocean, in April 2021 a similar incident occurred in the same ocean, and in 2020 parts of the rocket fell somewhere in West Africa.
Although no disasters or deaths have been reported so far from such incidents, there is a growing number of calls for international regulations or laws to prevent such incidents from other countries with a space programme.
#EUSST contributing sensors have been following space object CZ-5B. MFDR radar can confirm that the object is tumbling. #CZ5B #LongMarch5B pic.twitter.com/yP4uxdzbGy
- EUSST (@EU_SST) October 31, 2022
