9 May 2021

Chinese rocket to crash-land today

From Sunday Morning, 7:10 am on 9 May 2021

The short life in space of the Long March 5B Chinese rocket is coming to an end, and that'll be today.

This rocket booster, part of a heavy lift launch vehicle they call it, this 22-ton, 30-meter-tall, 5-meter-in-diameter piece of space junk reached orbital velocity instead of falling within a predetermined area as it was carrying up part of China's Space Station.

We've been told it could come down, or parts of it, however unlikely, in New Zealand north of Wellington, but there's a 70 percent chance it'll hit the water somewhere on its crash path.

Physics professor Richard Easther from the University of Auckland has taken an interest in Long March 5B

The Long March-5B Y2 rocket, carrying the Tianhe module, blasts off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in south China's Hainan Province on 29 April, 2021.

Photo: Xinhua News Agency