A success, then doubts. Last Sunday, China announced that it had successfully launched the second of the three modules of its space station under construction into space, a crucial step towards the completion of this installation that will put the Middle Kingdom on its feet in the conquest of space.
The ship named Wentian, weighing about 20 tons and without an astronaut on board, was propelled by a Long March 5B rocket from the Wenchang launch center on the tropical island of Hainan.
Extremely low risk to humans.
Only, less than a week later, the US Space Command, a joint command of the United States in charge of space operations, is concerned about the fate of this rocket that, apparently, has escaped all control of the Chinese authorities. .
According to CNN, it should even recede towards Earth early next week, and the re-entry zone should be limited to between latitudes 41 degrees south and 41 degrees north of the equator. The exact point can only be estimated a few hours before entering the atmosphere.
As CNN reports, this is not the first time Beijing has been accused of mishandling space debris. Last year, a piece of Chinese rocket with an estimated length of 30 meters and weighing about 21 tons had already threatened to hit Earth. This time, the affected remains would weigh more or less the same.
“It’s a 20-tonne metallic object. Although it breaks apart as it enters the atmosphere, many pieces, some quite large, will reach the surface,” said Michael Byers, a professor at the University of British Columbia who also specializes in space debris. risks.
According to him, the risk to humans remains extremely low, but the large pieces could cause some damage if they fell into populated areas. According to him, logically, the more waste there is, the greater the chances that something will fall, especially in the southern hemisphere of the Globe.
“This risk is completely avoidable because there are now technologies and mission designs that can provide controlled re-entries instead of uncontrolled and therefore completely random,” he explains, further pointing to regions uninhabited by man, such as the oceans.
“Total success” for China
On the Chinese side, we prefer to salute the “total success” of this operation. Almost 18 meters long and 4.2 meters in diameter, this laboratory module docked at Tianhe, the first module of the station already in orbit since April 2021.
“It’s the first time China has had to couple such large vehicles together” and “it’s a delicate operation,” Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the United Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told AFP.
Equipped with three sleeping spaces, a bathroom and a kitchen, Wentian will serve as a backup platform to control the station in the event of a failure. The module also has spaces for scientific experiments and includes an airlock that will become the preferred passageway for spacewalks.
Source: BFM TV
