(CNN) — Space experts are tracking a part of a Russian rocket that is going to make an uncontrolled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere in the next 24 hours.
The Angara-A5 heavy-lift rocket was launched on Monday, December 27, from the Plesetsk spaceport in Russia’s northwestern Arkhangelsk region. A new upper stage of the rocket, known as the Persei booster, was tested at launch. according to the state news agency TAS.
“It is safe to say that in the next 24 hours it will fall, but no one can say where, because in the span of several hours it will circle the globe several times,” said Holger Krag, head of the Space Debris Office at the European Space Agency. to CNN.
Most space debris burns upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, but it is possible that larger pieces could cause damage if they land in inhabited regions.
The Russian rocket piece was traveling at 7.5 kilometers per second and its reentry latitude was likely between 63 degrees north and south of the equator, Krag said.
Risk level
Although it is highly unlikely to cause harm or harm someone, “the risk is real and cannot be ignored,” he said.
In May 2021, NASA lashed out at China for failing to meet “liability standards” after the remnants of a runaway rocket used to launch the Chinese space station plunged into the Indian Ocean.
The piece of the Russian rocket is believed to be smaller than the Chinese wreckage, weighing about 4 tons without fuel, compared to 20 tons for the Chinese Long March 5B rocket, Krag said.
The Chinese Long March rocket was one of the largest objects in recent memory to collide with the Earth after leaving its orbit, after the 2018 incident in which a piece of a Chinese space laboratory fell off over the Pacific Ocean and the 2020 reentry of another Long March 5B rocket.
The Persei booster is about 10 meters long compared to China’s 32-meter Long March 5B rocket, said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics- Harvard & Smithsonian. Although it weighs less, it had about 16 tons of propellant on board, he said.
The “total mass is about the same as that of the Chinese stage, but most of it is probably liquid and will burn up in the atmosphere, so the risk to the ground is significantly less. I think so,” McDowell said by email. .
Original intentions
The astronomer added that the Russian stage of the rocket was not intended to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in this way.
“It was intended to end up in an orbit in which it would remain for many thousands of years. The rocket could not re-enter. The re-entry of the Chinese stage was by DESIGN, they deliberately left it in a low orbit.”
McDowell said the rocket stage would re-enter between 1 and 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
Russia’s space agency Roscosmos told CNN that the launch was operated by Russia’s Defense Ministry, which did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.
International best practice for spent rocket or spacecraft parts at the end of their useful life was normally to make a controlled re-entry and fall to Earth in an uninhabited area, usually a remote part of the Pacific Ocean, Krag said.
Krag added that, on average, between 100 and 200 tons of space debris re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner each year. Only one person is known to have been hit by space debris: a woman named Lottie Williams and Texas in 1997. He lived to tell.
– CNN’s Kristin Fisher contributed to this report.