The Rocket: The Chinese Rocket, Long March 5 was launched last week as part of the program for the Chinese Space Station. Parts of the rocket were expected to be the future living space for the Space Station.
This morning's plot of the orbital perigee and apogee of Tianhe and its CZ-5B rocket booster versus time. The apogee of the core stage continues to decay as expected. Data from https://t.co/8WzZEGbHgW pic.twitter.com/BZ4nQIV09C
— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) May 5, 2021
Re-entry to orbit: It is uncommon for rockets to reach the necessary velocity to re-enter the orbit, however Long March 5 is currently orbiting the earth every 90 minutes and is expected to crash back on the planet. At 18 tonnes, it will be the largest item in history to have undirected entry back into the atmosphere.
US precautions: The U.S state department is currently carefully monitoring the situation, with no plans to shoot it down as of yet. The Defence Secretary hopes that the rocket will fall into a segment of the planet where it won’t hurt anyone, preferably the ocean.
Concern: The first obvious concern of a normal person will be that if this debris can harm anyone. While the chances of ‘Space Junk’ harming anyone on ground are possible, they can also be termed as negligible. Space Junk usually burns off most of its elements on re-entry to orbit, and a similar circumstance happened in 2019 when some form of space residue was found on barren land in the Ivory Coast.
Our latest prediction for CZ-5B rocket body reentry is:
09 May 2021 03:43 UTC ± 16 hours
Reentry will be along one of the ground tracks shown here. It is still too early to determine a meaningful debris footprint. Follow this page for updates: https://t.co/p2AU9zE3y2 pic.twitter.com/MgzRAOTJnk— The Aerospace Corporation (@AerospaceCorp) May 6, 2021
The current orbit of the rocket is mostly over water bodies, so the risk of this payload landing on a populated area while there, is very low. Most probable case scenario seems to be that the rocket will splash into water. The likelihood of any human being harmed by this rocket is still very low, said the US defense secretary as the payload is expected to land on earth on March 8th.