China may be an emerging economy, but this week the country is not too positive in the news. For example, the country’s carbon emissions are just as high as almost all Western countries combined. In addition, somewhere above our Earth is a Chinese rocket that crashes into Earth fresh from space this weekend . Don’t worry, the risks are ‘extremely low’ of people getting hurt.
Chinese Long March 5B missile
The broken rocket is not exactly a small boy: at 30 meters and 22 metric tons, it is a large one. It is a Chinese Long March 5B rocket that helped create a new space station. The rocket will return to Earth sometime this weekend, but analysts say it is likely to end up in the ocean. In itself, you don’t have to be a clever head to come up with those statistics: oceans cover 72 percent of the surface of the earth.
Not that we have no idea where the rocket is, because the US Space Command keeps a close eye on where the 27,000 pieces of space debris of 10 centimeters and larger are located and this rocket is one of them. However, it is only hours before the rocket enters our planet’s atmosphere that it can be determined where exactly it will crash, writes TheVerge . Still, it could technically happen that tomorrow you walk in a park and get a missile on your head.
Space waste
Since the missile is broken, it cannot be steered in another direction. Last year, another piece of a Long March 5B missile fell off Ivory Coast in Africa. Funny detail: every day there are objects that enter our atmosphere, but they are often burned before they hit the ground. There is even some kind of orbit around the earth with lots of space debris. The more often that space debris collides with each other, the faster it will fly around. If at any point too much space debris continues to fly around at too high a speed, it will become nearly impossible for humanity to leave Earth. After all, it would be far too dangerous. That space waste travels fast on average: 8 kilometers per second.
We can recommend that you take extra care in the coming days, but let’s be honest: it is probably difficult to jump away in time. We are curious when and if the US Space Command will be able to accurately and on time tell us where we can expect the gigantic colossus – or parts of it. Fortunately, that last night went better with the SpaceX rocket .
