A massive chuck of China’s failed rocket fell to Earth Monday, but a few minutes sooner and it would have crashed right into New York City.
Reports say that debris would have rained down on the Big Apple if the Long March 5B rocket would re-entered the atmosphere just 15 minutes earlier.
The Chinese rocket carrying an experimental craft into orbit launched on May 5 and malfunctioned after just a week in space, which led to the uncontrolled descend.
The 20-ton core stage of the rocket came barreling down into Earth’s atmosphere around 11am ET, moving at thousands of miles per minute.
Although most of the debris was scorched during re-entry, a bus-size piece splashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of West Africa, according to the Independent.
Astronomers say the piece that fell was 93 feet long and weighed 20 tons – making it the most massive object to make an uncontrolled reentry from space in decades.
A large chunk landed off the coast of West Africa and smaller pieces fell in Cote d’Ivoire – no injuries were reported.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told The Independent that: ‘Even in space there’s a thin bit of atmosphere left.
‘Objects in low orbit travel at 18,000 mph, so even a tiny bit of air makes a huge headwind.’
‘This causes ‘orbital decay’ – the satellite’s orbit gets lower and lower over time, into the denser atmosphere where the headwind is even bigger.’
The Chinese Long March CZ-5B rocket was used to launch a cargo capsule and a new-generation spaceship designed to send astronauts to the Moon.
Its descent was confirmed by the 18th Space Control Squadron, a unit of the US Air Force that tracks space debris in Earth’s orbit.
The military agency said it was notable not just for the size of the rocket but also the extent of the window of its uncontrolled descent.
Trackers were unable to determine where the debris would eventually end up, with many speculating it could either fall into the ocean or land in Africa, US or Australia.
The rocket debris was travelling fast horizontally through the atmosphere, making it hard to predict exactly where it would come down, which is why they didn’t know for certain until not long before it splashed down.
The US Air Force prediction of the landing time was plus or minus half an hour and in that time it went three quarters of the way around the world, said McDowell.
Before it splashed down in the waters off the west coast of Mauritania, the rocket core flew over Los Angeles and New York City.
While it is described as ‘uncontrolled’, the descent wasn’t unplanned – space launches are planned with the re-entry of parts of rockets or launch vehicles – sometimes in controlled and sometimes uncontrolled descents back to Earth.
‘I’ve never seen a major reentry pass directly over so many major conurbations,’ said McDowell, adding that it thankfully missed any inhabited land.
Astronomers say the chance of it landing in a populated area was only a vague possibility but if it had the rocket core could have destroyed a building.
‘For a large object like this, dense pieces like parts of the rocket engines could survive reentry and crash to Earth,’ McDowell told CNN.
‘Once they reach the lower atmosphere they are traveling relatively slowly, so worst case is they could take out a house.’
The rocket was the largest Chinese-made launch vehicle ever sent into space and is an indication of the country’s ambitions.
It was launched from the Wenchang Space Launch Centre in China’s Hainan province on May 5 and spent several days in orbit before making its descent.
Beijing has invested heavily in its space program in recent years as it plays catch-up to the US – the only country to have sent a man to the Moon.
Assembly of the Chinese Tiangong space station, whose name means Heavenly Palace, is expected to begin this year and finish in 2022.
China also became the first nation to land on the far side of the Moon in January 2019, deploying a lunar rover that has driven some 1,476 feet so far.
The experimental spacecraft launched by this rocket is expected to be used to ferry astronauts to and from the Chinese space station when it is complete – as well as for possible future Moon landings.
