A Chinese cargo spacecraft serving the country’s permanent orbiting space station burned up heavily on re-entry amid separate concerns over China’s decision to allow a massive booster rocket to fall to Earth unchecked.
Only small parts of the Tianzhou-3 craft survived to land safely on Wednesday in a pre-determined area of the South Pacific, the China Manned Space Agency said.
Until July 17, the spacecraft was docked in the central part of the Tianhe station, and its return follows the addition of a laboratory module on Monday as China moves to complete the station in the coming months.
China’s space program is run by the ruling Communist Party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, and has largely advanced its space station program without the help of other nations. The US barred China from the International Space Station because of its military ties.
The booster that caught the attention of the space community was part of the massive 23-ton Long March 5B-Y3 rocket — China’s most powerful — that carried the Wentian module to the station, which currently houses three astronauts.
China has decided not to drive the booster back into the atmosphere, and it’s unclear exactly when or where it will come down to Earth. Although it will burn up heavily on return, there is still a small risk of fragments causing damage or casualties.
In this image released by Xinhua News Agency, a computer-generated simulation screen image at the Beijing Aerospace Center on July 17, 2022, shows the Tianzhou-3 cargo craft, right, separating from the orbiting station combination. China’s cargo spaceship has largely burned up on re-entry, amid separate concerns over China’s decision to allow a massive commemorative rocket to fall to Earth unchecked. The Chinese characters on the screen read “19 meter parking spot”. Credit: Guo Zhongzheng/Xinhua via AP
While China is not alone in such practices, the size of the Long March missile stage has attracted particular scrutiny.
China has allowed rocket stages to fall back to Earth on their own at least twice before and was accused by NASA last year of “failing to meet responsible standards regarding its space junk” after parts of a Chinese rocket landed in the Indian Ocean.
China also came under heavy criticism after it used a missile to destroy one of its weather satellites in 2007, creating a huge debris field.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian on Wednesday dismissed such concerns.
“Since the development stage of the space engineering program, China has taken into account the mitigation of debris and the de-orbital return to the atmosphere of missions involving launch vehicles and satellites sent into orbit,” Zhao said at a daily briefing on Wednesday.
“It is understood that this type of rocket adopts a special technical design that most of the components will burn up and be destroyed during the re-entry process,” Zhao said. “The potential for damage to air operations or on the ground is extremely low.”
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