Disintegrated Chinese rocket debris falls into Indian Ocean
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The debris of the Chinese Long March 5B rocket, which delivered a new module to China's space station, fell back into the Indian Ocean.
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China's 5B rocket debris crashed back to earth over the Indian Ocean
Space officials from China and the US confirmed that the remnants of a massive Chinese rocket booster crashed back to Earth over the Indian Ocean on Saturday.
The wreckage of the Long March 5B rocket hit Earth over the sea in the southwestern Philippines with the debris' vast majority burning up upon re-entry, according to China's space flight agency statement.
Breaking News: Debris from a large Chinese rocket, the Long March 5B, landed in the Indian Ocean near the Maldives, China's space administration said. #BREAKING #Breaking_News #china_rocket pic.twitter.com/j1g5je580a
— Discover (@sudannew2017) May 9, 2021
While the rocket body had been in an elliptical orbit and was "dragged toward an uncontrolled re-entry," to Earth's atmosphere, as per the Aerospace Corp, experts had already deemed the possibility of injury or infrastructure damage to be low, noting that much of the massive booster would burn up upon re-entering Earth's atmosphere, and huge chunks would survive and fall to the ground or the oceans.
China has dismissed Western concerns over the debris, calling it a smear effort as the US-Chinese space race escalates, especially since experts have insisted that uncontrolled re-entries are avoidable.
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"The US and Western media deliberately exaggerate and exaggerate the 'loss-of-control' of the Chinese rocket debris and the probability of personal injury caused by the rocket debris, obviously with bad intentions," Shanghai-based news site Guancha.cn said on Tuesday.
The Long March 5B took off on July 24 carrying one of the heaviest payloads in the past years, one of the three modules for China's under-construction Tiangong space station. The Chinese space station started out after the US banned China from taking part in the International Space Station.
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