After almost a week stay in orbit, the Chinese missile suddenly malfunctioned and returned to Earth’s orbit. Fragments of the rocket with great speed moved to the Ground, nearly falling on new York, reports the New York Post.
Rocket Long March 5B re-entered the atmosphere on Monday, and, probably, its wreckage would be showered with one of the largest U.S. cities, space debris was 15-20 minutes away from the crash in new York.
The 30-meter rocket with an unknown prototype of a capsule, a newly developed in China, was launched on 5 may. After about a week stay in orbit, 20-ton main stage of the rocket returned into the atmosphere about 11 a.m., moving at a speed of thousands of kilometers per hour and simultaneously burning.
According to space command of the United States, which tracked the movement of the spacecraft, its separated part, the size of a small bus that fell into the Atlantic ocean off the coast of West Africa. It became known that the rest of the debris landed in côte d’ivoire. No casualties were reported.
NASA explained that normally a two-stage rocket discards its first part before it reaches orbit — it is done to avoid uncontrolled movements of large space object from the orbit of the earth.
This is not the first case when the Chinese missiles leave behind space debris. In November 2019 one of the rocket boosters failed on Chinese village, spilling toxic fuel and destroying at least one building.
