With the expansion of its space station, China is once again accepting that people on earth will be harmed. A burned-out giant rocket stage used recently in the launch of Beijing's new Wentian module for Beijing's space laboratory will crash uncontrollably over the weekend.
Exactly where and when the debris from the CZ-5B main rocket stage, estimated to weigh more than 20 tons and be a good 33 meters long, from China's largest rocket "Long March 5B" will hit the ground is still uncertain.
In just a few minutes, the rocket stage flies over huge distances at a speed of 27,000 km/h. It orbits the earth once every 90 minutes. Therefore, the debris area is difficult to predict. Theoretically, cities with over a million inhabitants are on the impact route.
A crash is currently expected between Saturday 30th July and Monday 1st August. The only statement that can currently be made concerns the re-entry zone, according to a request from Europe's space agency ESA. According to this, the crash site lies geographically between the latitudes 41 degrees south and 41 degrees north. That's a 9,000 km wide belt around the equator. At least it can be said with certainty that there is no danger in Germany.
On the other hand, numerous metropolises such as New York, Barcelona or Istanbul as well as southern Italy, southern Spain, India, large parts of China and Africa as well as Australia are in the potential crash area. A total of 88 percent of the world's population lived in the theoretical crash zone, the British news portal The Register has calculated.
Nevertheless, experts warn against hysteria and too much fear. So far, no one has ever been injured by falling space debris. According to the ESA, around 250 tons of space debris enter the earth's atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner every year, most of which burns up.
A rough estimate is that 20 to 40 percent of the mass survives the extreme conditions of re-entry and thus arrives on Earth's surface, according to ESA. Experts from the US National Research Center Aerospace Corp. are assuming that five to nine tons will hit the ground in the forthcoming crash.
China is presenting itself as a repeat offender in the upcoming uncontrolled crash of its missile. There was a similar scenario in May 2021 when a CZ-5B stage also crashed. The debris splashed into the sea off the Maldives. However, falling rocket stages from the Chinese have repeatedly damaged buildings in their own country shortly after take-off.
Experts see China with at least three missions in sixth, seventh and eighth place in the world's largest rocket crashes from space. Controlled crashes are also included in these statistics, such as in 2001 at the Russian space station MIR.
China's missile crashes are by no means always light-hearted. In May 2020, huge metal fragments from a Chinese missile were found damaging homes in West Africa's Ivory Coast. The Europeans drop the first stage of their Ariane rocket into the Atlantic, and the Russians crash debris into the steppes of Kazakhstan from the Soyuz rockets launched from Baikonour.
China's practice of uncontrolled rocket crashes has repeatedly drawn criticism. According to ESA, most international guidelines require controlled re-entry, either to a sea or to a safe place on earth. The trajectory of the propulsion stage is designed in such a way that it descends in a specific area.
The rocket company SpaceX of the US billionaire and technology entrepreneur Elon Musk goes one step further. It is the only company to date to retrieve the first rocket stage from space, flying vertically and decelerating, in order to reuse it. His future new giant rocket Starship will even be completely reusable, including the upper stage.
However, China does not feel bound by the rules for a controlled missile launch. The main thing is that the space station is expanded. To do this, Beijing lets the rocket propulsion stage fly so high and fast into space that it then orbits the earth for a few more days.
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