Pieces of Chinese ‘Long March’ 5B rocket have landed in the Pacific Ocean

China crashed its ‘Long March’ 5B rocket uncontrollably, fearing debris would end up in populated areas. Space authorities are now reporting that some debris has ended up in the Pacific Ocean and most of it has been burned.

Earlier this week, this rocket launched the third and final module of the Tiangong space station. The Long March 5B rocket would crash uncontrollably, which would be the fifth time in less than three years for a large Chinese rocket, according to The Washington Post. Because the ‘Long March’ 5B rocket was not expected to completely burn up on its return due to its sheer size, it was expected that 10 to 40 percent of the whole would crash in the form of debris. Although much of the area where the debris could potentially crash consists of oceans, some could have ended up on land.

Meanwhile, Chinese and American space authorities announced that some debris fell into the Pacific Ocean, roughly a few hundred miles south of Mexico. Furthermore, most of the rocket would have been burned. In the Spanish Catalonia this morning it was airspace temporarily closedbecause the debris came over there.

Ted Muelhaupt, an adviser to the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation, told The Washington Post that the chances of a person being hit by the debris are generally nil. The odds would be ‘less than the odds of winning the lottery’. Normally, space organizations also dump their boosters into the sea or let them land again. In the case of the Chinese rocket, the space debris could potentially end up in rural areas where 88 percent of the world’s population lives. Muelhaupt states that the chance of victims in this case was higher, namely between 1 in 1000 and 1 in 230. The internationally recognized standard states that a returning space object should have a chance of no more than 1 in 10,000 to make victims.

In May of 2020, debris from a Long March 5B rocket still crashed Ivory Coast and in July fragments fell in it Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. At the time, China could count on a lot of international criticism.