Chinese Satellite Rocket Booster Crashes, Sends Exploding Debris Down on Beijing
A Chinese satellite launch became quite the spectacle when its rocket booster detached and fell back to Earth, causing a large explosion.
Knewz.com has learned that the incident took place on Christmas day when the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan launched two space vehicles for the Asian country’s Beidou navigation program.
The rocket booster falls to earth and then catches fire. By: X/@AJ_FI
The two satellites were carried into space by Long March 3B rockets which successfully positioned their passengers into medium Earth orbit, Men’s Journal reports. But once the latter was completed, the rockets’ side boosters came loose and fell back to Earth.
Footage of the falling debris and the subsequent explosion in Guangxi, South China, made it onto social media and circulated quickly – grabbing the attention of netizens and experts alike.
One of the videos shows a cylindrical object falling from the sky. Later, the video depicted a rather large mass of wreckage belching thick yellowish smoke in what appears to be private property.
People walking around the downed rocket wreck. By: X/@AJ_FI
The video pans out and captures dismayed people walking around inspecting the debris.
The incident caught the attention of Andrew Jones, a journalist tracking China’s space endeavors.
He said: “It’s been a while … this kind of falling booster action was a feature of the Long March 3B launches of Beidou satellites from Xichang.”
Jones caught the initial launches too and also commented on them saying: “Launches: At 2239 UTC Dec. 25 a CZ-11 launched the Shiyan-24C trio of experimental sats from a sea barge off Guangdong. At 0326 Dec. 26, a CZ-3B+YZ-1 lifted off from Xichang carrying Beidou sats 57 & 58 into medium Earth orbits. These were [the] 64th & 65th Chinese launches of 2023,” per X.
China’s haphazard space vehicle groundings seem to be a trend and in November 2022, Space.com reported on another graceless return to Earth.
The smoke trail left behind by the falling rocket. By: X/@AJ_FI
The item in question was a 23-ton chunk of debris which was caused by a Long March 5B rocket launch after the Asian country sent it’s Mengtian science module to join its Tiangong space station.
It was noted that as with previous Long March 5B launches, no effort was made to safely deorbit the rocket’s core stage after reaching orbit.
As a result, the massive chunk of space junk was pulled down by atmospheric drag, creating concern about its unpredictable landing location.
The incident drew condemnation from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
“Once again, the People’s Republic of China is taking unnecessary risks with the uncontrolled rocket stage reentry of their Long March 5B rocket stage. They did not share specific trajectory information which is needed to predict landing zones and reduce risk. This is the PRC’s fourth uncontrolled reentry since May 2020, and each of these reentries has been the largest in the last 30 years,” said NASA’s Bill Nelson, (via Space Policy Online).
The smoking rocket wreck. By: X/@AJ_FI
“Today’s uncontrolled #LongMarch5B re-entry underlines the growing risk for critical infrastructure both in space & on the ground posed by unsustainable spaceflight practices,” the ESA chief Josef Aschbacher posted to X.
As with the latter, the Chinese government has not explained the recent rocket’s crash landing.