BEIJING: Debris from the recently launched Chinese Long March 5B carrier rocket fell back to Earth early on Sunday morning, with most of the remnants burning up during the reentry process, the China Manned Space Agency said.
The debris’ atmospheric reentry took place around 12:55 am (Beijing time), the agency said in a brief statement, noting that it eventually landed in Pacific Ocean waters located at 9.1 degrees north and 119 degrees east. It did not provide additional details.
Based on the coordinates given by the agency, the site is in the Sulu Sea, close to Palawan Island in the Philippines.
The return put an end to Western media speculations on the possibility of debris crashing over an inhabited area in what they called “an uncontrolled reentry” of the Long March 5B. Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said on Wednesday that China had been closely tracking the movement of the used rocket in orbit and continued to publish its information online. He noted the Long March 5B rocket model is designed and has devices to neutralize its debris and impact on the Earth, and that most of its components would be destroyed during reentry. Blasting off on July 24 from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province, the rocket was used to send China’s Wentian space lab module to dock with the country’s Tiangong space station.
–The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
