#uncontrolled reentry
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ERS-2 reenters Earth’s atmosphere over Pacific Ocean
At approximately 18:17 CET (17:17 UTC) on Wednesday 21 February 2024, ESA’s ERS-2 satellite completed its atmospheric reentry over the North Pacific Ocean. No damage to property has been reported.
ESA’s second European Remote Sensing satellite, ERS-2, was launched almost 30 years ago, on 21 April 1995. Together with the almost-identical ERS-1, it provided invaluable long-term data on Earth’s land surfaces, ocean temperatures, ozone layer and polar ice extent that revolutionised our understanding of the Earth system. It was also called upon to monitor and assist the response to natural disasters.
“The ERS satellites have provided a stream of data which has changed our view of the world in which we live,” said ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Simonetta Cheli. “They have provided us with new insights on our planet, the chemistry of our atmosphere, the behavior of our oceans, and the effects of mankind’s activity on our environment – creating new opportunities for scientific research and applications.”
Having far exceeded its planned lifetime of three years, ESA took the decision to deorbit ERS-2 in 2011 in light of growing concern over the long-term hazard that orbital debris poses to current and future space activities.
The satellite’s altitude had been declining steadily ever since. On 21 February 2024, it reached the critical altitude of around 80 km at which the atmospheric drag was so strong that began to break into pieces.
An international campaign involving the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee and ESA’s Space Debris Office monitored the reentry.
Atmospheric reentry – past, present and future
“Uncontrolled Atmospheric reentry has long been a common method for disposing of space objects at the end of their mission,” said Tim Flohrer, Head of ESA’s Space Debris Office. “We see objects similar in size or larger to ERS-2 reentering the atmosphere multiple times each year.”
“In the 67 years of spaceflight, thousands of tons of artificial space objects have reentered the atmosphere. Pieces that make it to the surface have only very rarely caused any damage and there has never been a confirmed report of a human injury.”
ERS-2’s reentry was ‘natural’. All of its remaining fuel was depleted during deorbiting to reduce the risk of an internal malfunction causing the satellite to break up into pieces while still at an altitude used by active satellites. As a result, it was not possible to control ERS-2 at any point during its reentry and the only force driving its descent was unpredictable atmospheric drag.
This was the best option for disposing of the satellite given the way it was designed in the 1980s. However, the time and location of a natural reentry are difficult to predict prior to the satellite’s final few hours in space.
Natural reentries are no longer the gold standard in space sustainability. By implementing the ‘ESA Zero Debris approach’, the Agency is committed to ensuring the long-term sustainability of space activities by mitigating the creation of space debris wherever possible and ensuring the safest possible reentry of satellites at the end of their lives. ESA also aims to encourage others to pursue a similar path through the community-led Zero Debris Charter initiative.
ESA’s missions in Earth orbit are now designed to conduct ‘controlled’ reentries. During a controlled reentry, spacecraft operators can ensure that the satellite comes down over sparsely populated regions on Earth such as the South Pacific Ocean.
Meanwhile, ESA continues to make efforts to dispose of its older satellites (such as ERS-2, Aeolus, Cluster and Integral) in more sustainable ways than were originally planned.
Mission legacy
ERS-2, and its predecessor ERS-1, were the most sophisticated satellites ever developed and launched by Europe. The satellite carried a suite of scientific instruments and technologies into orbit that collected valuable data for more than one and a half decades, including Europe's first instrument to study atmospheric ozone. The ERS heritage datasets are today curated and made accessible through ESA’s Heritage Space Programme.
The ERS satellites also set the stage for many successor missions dedicated to studying our changing world, such as Envisat, the MetOp weather satellites, ESA’s Earth Explorer scientific research missions and the Copernicus Sentinels, as well as many other national satellite missions.
“ERS heritage data are still widely used today mostly in combination with data from newer missions as long-term data records are for example essential for identifying and understanding changes to our climate,” said ESA’s Heritage Space Programme Manager, Mirko Albani. “The mission is also a great example of how ESA pioneers new technologies that later become operational to support services such as weather forecasting and climate monitoring that benefit the citizens of ESA Member States and people around the world”.
TOP IMAGE....ERS-2 was launched in 1995, four years after ERS-1, the first European Remote Sensing satellite. At the time, these two satellites were the most sophisticated European Earth observation spacecraft ever developed, delivering new information to study Earth's land, oceans, atmosphere and polar ice, as well as being called upon to monitor natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. In 2011, the mission was retired and the spacecraft was reorbited into a safe disposal orbit in compliance with ESA space-debris mitigation guidelines.
CENTRE IMAGE....ERS-2 imaged on 29 January using a camera on board another satellite
LOWER IMAGE....ERS-2 reentry – how and why it happened
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dragons are much larger than humans. dragons eat a lot more than humans. to keep an entire species alive and genetically viable for thousands upon thousands (perhaps as much as even hundreds of thousands) of years in complete and perpetual genetic isolation, the astrolab would have to be big. really. big. small to medium city big at minimum and even then continued genetic viability in the population, much less without severe breeding control measures to ensure maximum avoidance of potential inbreeding, for such a long period of time would be highly unlikely. the astrolab by necessity would have to be at the very least the size of something in the realm of a small to middling island. without even factoring in the necessity for artificial biosphere facilities and farmland. big enough to not only sustain a population that long but still have enough survivors to maintain the genetic variance to continue the species after the undoubted death toll of the impact. the last time something even half that big hit earth it punched a hole in the atmosphere so hard that there’s a not insignificant chance there are dinosaur remains on the moon, rained liquid glass from the impact site’s surrounding area being vaporized, and everything bigger than a rat died!
which brings the next problem-i can’t say i have any understanding of the maths behind it but the astrolab as the size it would naturally have to be making an uncontrolled reentry to the atmosphere would .... prrrooobably be an extinction-level impact event at best.
i’m sure we could likely say they gunned the engines at the last second to slow their reentry speed just barely enough that anyone onboard could survive it-which, alright is what i’m going with, they pulled put and cashed in every last magitechnological get-out-of-jail slip they still had left that they knew how to use to just barely squeak out a landing velocity that anyone could possibly walk away from still living-, and i’m sure the coastal towns and regions of the starfall isles already have their tsunami ward systems in place in preparation for astral impact events. but i doubt they’re prepared for anything of this sheer scale occurring in their waters-their systems are more likely tuned for the typical bus-and-under-sized asteroids and resulting waves, not for a geologic chunk of the planet seemingly reuniting with the ocean from which it was raised. and the size the astrolab would have to be is such that even if it had slowed it’s reentry speed to a near dead halt before impact, the water displacement of it’s wreckage settling to the bottom of the sea alone i imagine would be bordering on cataclysmic. and what about flights other than arcane, that are almost definitely not prepared for any sort of space object impact or tsunami at all?
it’d just....
#flight rising#depression-induced showerthoughts#to quote tvtropes fantasy writers have no sense of scale#not a scientist but you know i feel like a thing that big coming down would be a Problem#regardless of speed#someone else can probably do the actual math calculations on that#flight rising headcanons
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A European Space Agency spacecraft is making an uncontrolled nosedive into Earth's atmosphere – with elements of the 2.3-ton spent satellite likely to survive the plunge into purgatory.
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Big, dead European satellite will crash back to Earth this month | Space
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Could you elaborate on what the post you reblogged on the ISS reentry means? I feel like I'm missing a lot of context to know what it says
Not sure which bit is unclear so follow-up if need be, but the basic issue is that the ISS is getting old and it won't be safe to operate too much longer. It wasn't even designed to last this long, but it's also a great resource and vector for international cooperation, so the various partners intend to operate it through the 2020s. Circa 2031, though, it'll be a third of a century old and definitely in need of retirement.
Because the atmosphere never really stops, there's still drag in low Earth orbit and anything, but especially something the size of a space station, will eventually slow down and reenter the thick part of the atmosphere. Because the ISS is so large, major components will survive reentry and thus pose a risk to anyone on the ground. An uncontrolled reentry therefore potentially dangerous, though fortunately nobody's been hurt or had serious property damage from past space station reentries. (There was a mostly-humorous littering fine from an Australian town after Skylab reentered.)
NASA put out a req recently for a vehicle to push the ISS out of orbit, so it will reenter in a controlled manner and any debris will land in a remote part of the ocean. @tli-burn and I both question the need for such a craft when there are a variety of resupply vehicles (Dragon, Cygnus, HTV) which could probably be modified at lower cost and risk.
Does that cover it?
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Ulysses
Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.
Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980
In the prologue to the Apollo moonshot the mastery of spacewalks, rendezvous, docking, long-duration flights, reentry and precision landing had to be mastered first by the workhorse of the Gemini Project. The practical application of theoretical physics cultivated by a series of tutorials was the risk mitigation needed to thread the needle of docking in orbit and to walk atop the lunar surface for the Apollo excursion. Over twenty months as each new mission’s complexity became more edifying than the last NASA laid the groundwork for this big exploit. Rendezvous entailed station-keeping and docking between two craft in a zero-G environment. The moonwalk although etched in civilization’s hagiography with the iconic images of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin cavorting about on the Moon would only materialize after Gemini’s 12 hours and 25 minutes of spacewalks (Machell 1967). Multiple redundancies of backups were also exported into Apollo to eschew primary-system failures. In the gospel of engineering such failsafe devices are critical to isolate malfunctions that can cascade into catastrophe. Amidst the Gemini VIII mission a runaway thruster convulsed the vehicle into an uncontrollable spin until the last-minute Hail Mary pass by astronaut Armstrong arrested the rate of rotation. Learned mistakes then bolstered Apollo.
As the apotheosis of the space programme Washington’s industrial policy did not exercise any austerity for the successor to the Mercury and Gemini projects. In its Keynesian stimulus for a dash of Cold War bravado NASA mobilized over 20,000 industrial firms at the cost of $25.4b or $186b in real value (DiLisi et al. 2019). This fiscal demand mimicked the audacity of landing a man on the Moon versus splitting the atom in the Manhattan Project which was monetized at $2b or 34 billion in constant dollars. Nuclear fission at the Los Alamos Laboratory at its zenith saw a headcount of 130,000 personnel in a foil to the moonshot’s 400,000 (Huges 2003). Therefore in Apollo’s anatomy a bevy of august firms were conscripted into service for the three million working parts of the Saturn V rocket whose power could be analogized to the output of eighty-five Hoover Dams (Bilstein 1999). It was this crown jewel of the space programme dwarfing Mercury’s Redstone and Gemini’s Titan II that brought humanity to the Moon and back. Washington’s calculated use of public funds architected an entire industry from the ground up in the space race. Between the creation of the bureaucratic mechanism in the guise of NASA and pecuniary investments in R&D an Industrial Revolution was co-authored by state-driven capitalism and firms.
Apollo embodied the Everest of engineering across the gamut of rocketry, metallurgy, thermodynamics, aerodynamics and astrophysics to cement man’s presence onto the distant orb of the Moon. But success is not at all the default of industrial policy when bureaucracies are prone to beget sinkholes of profligate spending. Where Washington excelled was to marshal a uniformity of purpose for the high stakes of President Kennedy’s promise to plant America’s flag atop the Moon. A delegation of contracts solicited expertise from Boeing, Chrysler, Rocketdyne, North American Aviation’s Space and Information Systems Division (S&ID), Douglas Aircraft, IBM and Grumman. NASA’s Marshal Space Flight Centre in Alabama helmed by the feted von Braun and his retinue coordinated all these discrete nodes of operations. Boeing and Chrysler were tasked with integrating the five F-1 engines abreast of fuel tanks and avionics for the first stage of the Saturn V rocket. Rocketdyne designed those mainstay engines together with its J-2 variant. These smaller units were married to the upper stages whose in-flight restarts parked Apollo into earth’s orbit whereupon a second controlled burn pushed the craft into its Trans-Lunar Injection path. Reawakening an engine in the cold vacuum of space was fraught with complexity.
Within this leg of propelling astronauts beyond earth’s upper atmosphere it was S&ID that fitted the five J-2 powerplants to its second stage vehicle. These furnaces of thrust catapulted Apollo into orbit to await its manoeuvre towards the alien plains of the Moon. Inside the cylindrical hull fabricated from alloyed aluminum were vast reservoirs that cradled the propellants of liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Next to this coup of engineering would be the third stage manufactured by Douglas Aircraft whose import hinged on slingshotting the crew on its final approach to its mission objective. This smaller sibling of the Saturn V rocket innovated the bulkheads separating fuels with a substantial cut in mass for greater efficacy of operations when weight was at a premium. Right above this third stage sat IBM’s magnum opus. Wrapped around the circumference of the Saturn V there stood a three-foot high ring of digital computers and sensors in miniaturized form computing trajectories across the sky and into the sea of stars. Micro-adjustments in milliseconds remedied thrust deficits and directions across the battery of engines should one fail. Directly abutting the foregoing nerve centre of the Saturn V there nestled in the upper stages of the rocket was the Lunar Module under the stewardship of the Grumman Aircraft company.
This vehicle draped in Kapton foil since the want of an atmosphere fails to mediate extreme temperatures would descend upon the Moon’s regolith with a form factor resembling an arachnid. Outfitting the spacecraft with four spindly legs and an engine with modulated thrust ensured a soft landing on the alien world where the streamlined shapes of aerodynamics had no currency. Once ensconced on the surface courtesy of the vehicle’s throttleable velocity the second stage launched the explorers and their soil samples back out into space to rendezvous with the Command and Service Modules. Whilst each facet of the mission proved precocious the mission was greater than the sum of its parts. The alchemy of coordinating a phalanx of companies towards one end of landing a man on the Moon cannot be extolled enough. In this seminal act of innovation not only did a whole industry manifest from nothing but also America’s production shifted wholesale towards a knowledge economy. President Kennedy’s foresight to align industry and academia in colonizing the Moon became the verve and vim behind the boom in innovation that ushered in the era of postindustrialism. The return on investment would be a boon to technology in the crucible of Apollo as the brainchild of Washington’s industrial policy.
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China is Trying to Stop its Boosters Crashing
China has successfully tested a parachute system that can guide fallen rocket boosters into a predetermined parachute landing zone.
@neosciencehub
#neosciencehub #NSH #china #science #news #scifi #space #rocket #satellite #spacecraft #NASA
China’s space program has advanced by leaps and bounds in a relatively short time. However, it has suffered some bad publicity in recent years due to certain “uncontrolled reentries” (aka. crashes). On multiple occasions, spent first stages have fallen back to Earth, posing a potential threat to populated areas and prompting backlash from NASA and the ESA, who claimed China was taking…
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SpaceX Debris Causes Fiery Reentry Over Arizona and Colorado
Fiery display in the night sky as SpaceX debris made an uncontrolled reentry over Arizona and Colorado! This highlights the risks and challenges of space travel. #SpaceXdebris #spaceexploration #safetyconcerns.
On April 27, 2023, residents of Arizona and Colorado were treated to a spectacular yet alarming sight when they witnessed debris from SpaceX’s Crew-5 Dragon capsule burning up during its reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. The event caused a stream of bright pieces to light up the night sky, followed by loud noises that startled many residents.
SpaceX Debris Causes Fiery Reentry Over Arizona…
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#Arizona#Colorado#Crew-5 Dragon capsule#debris#reentry#safety#space debris management#space exploration#space travel.#SpaceX
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Aeolus' fiery demise to set standard for safe reentry ESA's wind mission, Aeolus, will soon be lowered in orbit leading to its fiery reentry and burn-up through Earth's atmosphere. ESA's efforts to ensure a safe return go well beyond international standards and place the agency in the lead for space safety. Having exceeded its planned life in orbit, the 1360-kg satellite is running out of fuel. Ensuring that enough fuel remains for a few final maneuvers, ESA's spacecraft operators will bring Aeolus back toward our planet's atmosphere for its inevitable demise. They will aim the mission toward the ocean, further reducing the very small chance that fragments could cause harm should any reach Earth's surface. This is the first assisted reentry of its kind and sets a precedent for a responsible approach to reduce the ever-increasing problem of space debris and uncontrolled reentries. Why is Aeolus coming home? Launched in 2018, Aeolus has outlived its planned three-year life in space by more than 18 months. During its mission, its trailblazing wind-mapping laser, which at one stage was thought a nigh-impossible feat of engineering, has significantly improved weather forecasts worldwide. Aeolus has been hailed as one of the most successful missions ever built and flown by ESA. As an Earth Explorer research mission, it was designed to demonstrate new space technology, but it became one of the highest impact-per-observation weather satellites, and its laser is still performing as well as ever. However, Aeolus' fuel is now almost depleted and orbiting low, at an altitude of just 320 km, means it is already being caught up by Earth's wispy atmosphere. Speeding up Aeolus' return is the sun. Solar flares and coronal mass ejections release matter and radiation, and when this washes past Earth, it increases the density of Earth's atmosphere. Intense solar activity in recent months means that the satellite has been using even more fuel to remain in orbit. For Aeolus, it's been like running against the wind. This is why, after five years of spectacular science, ESA's wind mission ended operations on 30 April 2023. Making use of this phase, scientists have put its instrument into a special mode to perform end-of-life activities that will help to prepare the Aeolus-2 follow-on mission, which like a phoenix will emerge from the ashes of its pathfinding predecessor. Aeolus' final breaths Over the next few months, Aeolus will descend naturally from its current altitude of 320 km to 280 km. At this point, spacecraft operators at ESA's mission control center, ESOC, in Darmstadt, Germany, will gradually lower it to 150 km above Earth's surface. The satellite will burn up as it descends to around 80 km. As populated regions make up a relatively small percentage of Earth's surface, the chance of a re-entry causing any harm is exceptionally low. The final date depends on how solar activity speeds up the process, but Aeolus is expected to be no more before the end of August. Aeolus engineers and industry partners have carefully worked out how to best position Aeolus in Earth's atmosphere to target open ocean waters upon reentry, hugely reducing the amount of land over which pieces fragments could fall. ESA's Aeolus Mission Manager, Tommaso Parrinello, said, "The exact details on the reentry approach and series of maneuvers and operations, as well as a more detailed timeline will be made public in mid-June. "For now, we can anticipate that we are targeting the best ocean corridor to reenter." With the assisted reentry of Aeolus, ESA is clearing the way for future missions to continue taking the pulse of our planet. They can only do this if Earth's orbits aren't filled with dangerous space debris, and safety is at the forefront of end-of-life activities. TOP IMAGE....ESA’s Aeolus wind mission provides timely and accurate profiles of the world’s winds and further information on aerosols and clouds. The mission advances our understanding of atmospheric dynamics. It also provides much-needed information to improve weather forecasts and contribute to climate research. The satellite carries a single instrument: a Doppler wind lidar called Aladin. This sophisticated instrument is designed to probe the lowermost 30 km of the atmosphere along the satellite’s orbital path. Comprising a powerful laser, a large telescope and a very sensitive receiver, Aladin is the first wind lidar in space. In cloud-free air the lidar probes the atmosphere down to the surface of Earth, or to the top of dense cloud. Data on wind will be ingested in weather models to improve forecasts. Improved weather forecasts have considerable socio-economic benefits, in particular for extreme weather events. For example, the better prediction of the strength and path of an evolving hurricane system is important for local emergency management. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab LOWER IMAGE....What goes up, nearly always comes back down. When it comes to the objects we send to space, atmospheric reentries are actually a fundamental tool in minimising the creation of space debris and ensuring a sustainable future in space. Credit: ESA / UNOOSA
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New Long March 5B Uncontrolled Reentry Tracked by Aerospace's Experts
https://aerospace.org/article/new-long-march-5b-uncontrolled-reentry-tracked-aerospaces-experts
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Chinas Wayward Rocket Has Disintegrated Over the Pacific Ocean
The launch of a Lengthy March 5B rocket on April 28, 2021.
Photograph: Chinatopix (AP)
The booster from a Chinese language Lengthy March 5B rocket reentered Earth’s ambiance at 6:01 a.m. ET Friday, with particles falling west of the Mexican coast. There are not any experiences of accidents, however the 22-metric-ton core stage threatened populated areas throughout its closing orbit.
U.S. Area Command confirmed the booster’s atmospheric reentry by means of Twitter, saying it fell over the south-central Pacific Ocean. Apparently, Area Command tracked a second atmospheric reentry linked with the Lengthy March 5B rocket, suggesting the rocket snapped into two giant items.
The percentages have been good that the 108-foot-long (33-meter) booster would come down over the ocean, as two-thirds of Earth is roofed in water. Nonetheless, China is selecting to play with folks’s lives and property, designing a rocket that, as a substitute of performing a protected and managed reentry after launch, flies right into a quickly decaying orbit. The rocket, carrying the third and closing module for China’s Tiangong area station, launched from Wenchang Area Launch Middle in Hainan on October 31. This marks the fourth event {that a} Lengthy March 5B rocket has entered into an uncontrolled state.
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Mission controllers had no approach to management the booster as soon as it entered orbit, forcing consultants to foretell the place and when it would land, which is notoriously tough to do. By yesterday night, most projections had the booster reentering round 12:00 p.m. ET at this time, give or take a couple of hours. The rocket, falling at 6:01 ET this morning, fell properly prematurely of the estimates churned lower than a half day earlier than it lastly dove into the ambiance at speeds reaching 17,500 miles per hour (28,160 kilometers per hour).
Particles fell to the southwest of the Mexican coast, close to 2.2 S 114.1 W. The booster was transferring in a northeastly route on the time, and had it stored going it could have flown over Mexico and components of the US. Particles footprints aren’t small, with widths typically reaching 44 miles (70 km) huge and over 1,240 miles (2,000 km) in size, Ted Muelhaupt, a marketing consultant with Aerospace’s Company Chief Engineer’s Workplace, advised reporters on Wednesday. Muelhaupt mentioned that between 10% and 40% of the booster was prone to survive reentry.
Throughout its closing orbit, the core stage flew over Spain, Saudi Arabia, and western Australia. Spain quickly closed a part of its airspace because the booster flew overhead, in accordance to Reuters. Nobody was harm (so far as we all know), however the wayward booster did lead to inconvenience.
That is the fourth incident involving an out-of-control Lengthy March 5B core stage. Two years in the past, particles from the inaugural launch of the rocket fell onto the Ivory Coast, reportedly inflicting harm to property. Particles from the second flight fell harmlessly into the Indian Ocean, however the reentry from the third flight in July 2022 was seen from Malaysia, with harmful bits of area junk raining down onto components of Indonesia and Philippines.
Extra: After 3 Months in Area, China’s Mysterious Spaceplane Ejects Unknown Object.
Originally published at Irvine News HQ
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Chinese rocket has crashed back to Earth but no one knows where
https://sciencespies.com/space/chinese-rocket-has-crashed-back-to-earth-but-no-one-knows-where/
Chinese rocket has crashed back to Earth but no one knows where
On Monday, China launched its Long March-5B rocket to carry the final module to the Tiangong space station – now it has fallen back to Earth but no one yet knows where it has hit
Space
4 November 2022
By Alex Wilkins
The Long March 5B rocket at the Wenchang launch site in China
CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images
A Chinese rocket used to build its space station has crashed back to Earth. It reentered the atmosphere at 10.01 utc – but at least some of it is expected to have survived to hit the surface and no one yet knows where it has landed.
On Monday, China launched its Long March-5B rocket to carry the final module to its Tiangong space station, which is now complete. The rocket’s booster, which weighs 22 tonnes and is 16 metres long, has spent the past week drifting back towards Earth.
But at least some of the rocket has a chance of making it to the ground with the initial predicted area – before it had reentered the atmosphere – where it might come down covering a region containing 88 per cent of the world’s population, according to the Aerospace Corporation (AC), an American non-profit group that produces technical guidance for the aerospace industry.
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The booster’s rapid speed of almost 30,000 kilometres per hour means that its exact time of reentry affects where it will come down, with a few seconds changing where it will hit by tens of kilometres. An impact location hasn’t yet been calculated.
#USSPACECOM can confirm the People’s Republic of China Long March 5B #CZ5B rocket re-entered the atmosphere over the south-central Pacific Ocean at 4:01am MDT/10:01 UTC on 11/4. For details on the uncontrolled reentry’s impact location, we once again refer you to the #PRC.
— U.S. Space Command (@US_SpaceCom) November 4, 2022
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told the New York Times that the probability of causing harm to aviation activities or people on the ground was low, and that “China has always carried out activities in the peaceful use of outer space in accordance with international law and international practice – re-entry of the last stage of a rocket is an international practice”.
Previous Chinese rocket launches have landed in unexpected locations: the first Long March-5B rocket launch appeared to scatter debris over villages in the Ivory Coast in May 2020, while another Long March-5B used to launch another space station module landed in water near the Philippines and Malaysia in July 2020.
However, the risk to the public is near zero if you live in the same latitude as Europe or Russia, as well as Asia or South America given the last two orbits of the booster. People outside these regions have a non-zero chance of being hit, but the chances are still incredibly small –more than 1 in 10 trillion.
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Article amended on 4 November 2022
We have corrected the mass of the rocket.
More on these topics:
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Chinese rocket will crash to Earth on Nov. 5. Here's what we know.
This is the fourth time in two years that a Long March 5B booster has crashed back to Earth in an uncontrolled reentry.
from Livescience https://www.livescience.com/chinese-rocket-booster-fourth-uncontrolled-reentry/
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