Surprising statement: The core of the Chinese missile is about to fall, Western experts say ‘don’t worry’

The core of China’s Truong Chinh 5B missile weighs up to 20 tons, even if burned by the atmosphere, the remainder can be up to a few tons, why do experts say ‘don’t worry too much’?
On April 29, 2021, China launched a 849-ton Truong Chinh 5B missile from the country’s Van Xuong Satellite Launch Center, with the mission of bringing a core module called Thien Ha into Earth orbit. to begin the assembly process of the Thien Cung Space Station.

However, an incident later occurred when the core of a missile weighing up to 20 tons lost control and fell back to the ground at an extremely high speed. According to forecasts by both the US space agency (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) at that time, the missile is likely to fall on May 8-10 – and currently the latest forecasts show. It will fall on May 9. Missile Truong Chinh 5B. Description: Thanh Luan Its location is a densely populated place or falls into the sea or uninhabited area is still a big question mark, so this event attracts the attention of most of the world’s major powers. . But many experts advise people in the countries concerned that “should not be too worried”. Specifically, sharing his opinion with CGTN channel on May 8, according to expert Zhang Xiaotian working at the School of Astronaut, Beihang University, told CGTN: “ As for the missile’s return to the ground, we need it to fall into a predetermined safe zone and there are many measures to achieve this goal such as choosing the launch location, controlling the brake. degrees at different stages “. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Uong Van Ban also said that the ability of fragments or missile cores to fall to the ground is extremely low because the missile is designed with special technology. . The Hindustantimes Indian newspaper quoted the Paris-PSL Observatory astronomer Florent Delefie as saying: “ The chance of the debris falling in an inhabited area is very low, with the probability of 1 in 1 million “. Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Harvard, in an interview on Space.com even said that the probability of a personal danger being hit by a piece of paper is just 1 in many billions of possibilities. “The chance of someone getting hurt is probably 1% and the chance of you getting hurt is 8 billion times smaller than that, so don’t worry about it.” Even so, McDowell also criticized China for its somewhat irresponsible actions: “Usually, after the missile completes its mission, the engine will be reactivated and dropped into the ocean or inhabited place, so the damage is very little. However, China did not do that,” he said. they put rockets in orbit and then set them free. “ Theverge quoted Dan Oltrogge – founder of Space Safety Coalition as well as leading expert at Commercial Space Operations Center expressed optimism about the missile core will fall into the sea. He said: “Most of the Earth’s surface is covered with water (70%), so there is almost no danger, the chance of it falling into a residential area is not zero but there would be little to worry about if it does. fell into the ocean “. “The chance of anyone getting hit by debris is very low, extremely low”, he stressed . Have there been instances of missile debris hit causing significant injury? In fact, in more than six decades since humans put their first satellite into the air, there have been no cases of debris hitting people causing significant injuries, according to Stijn Lemmens, an expert at Mechanical European Space Agency. The likelihood of falling into the residential area of ​​the Truong Chinh 5B missile core is very low. Photo: Bulletin The China Space Agency, the main unit responsible for this incident, still keeps information related to the missile secret, so it is still possible to estimate the specific drop position of the missile core. a big question. Most recently, they just made an official announcement. This is not the first case of a Chinese space object losing control, before in 2018, a space station named Thien Cung 1 weighing 8 tons also lost control and fell back to the ground. but no one was injured. Articles translated from sources: Space, CGTN, Hindustantimes, Theguardian