Chinese rocket core on potentially dangerous free-fall to Earth — again

The rocket body is expected to free-fall through Earth's atmosphere as early as July 31, but no one knows where it will land.

Another day, another Chinese rocket body falling uncontrolled from space.

U.S. Space Command is warning that the remnants of the massive Chinese rocket that was shot into space last Sunday will likely fall to Earth soon, perhaps as early as July 31.

The 10-storey, 21-tonne rocket was part of the Wentian space station module and docked with the country’s Tiangong space station this week.

The uncrewed craft was blasted to space by a Long March 5B rocket from the Wenchang launch centre on the Chinese island of Hainan.

The big problem, however, is that experts aren’t sure how much of the rocket will survive and, most concerning, they don’t know where it’s expected to crash-land.

“It is always difficult to assess the amount of surviving mass and number of fragments without knowing the design of the object, but a reasonable ‘rule-of-thumb’ is about 20 to 40 per cent of the original dry mass,” Holger Krag, head of the Space Safety Program Office for the European Space Agency, told SpaceNews.

This is the third time China has decided not to control the disposal of the rocket body, once again putting the country under scrutiny. In both 2020 and 2021 China was responsible for similar uncontrolled falls.

Many experts believe China is taking an unnecessary risk by not tracking or controlling the fall of the massive debris.