US Monitoring Russian Rocket’s Uncontrolled Re-Entry

A massive chunk of a Russian rocket re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere Wednesday after raising fears of an impact in various U.S. locations. US Space Command said in a statement that it was “aware of and tracking the…

IJR SyndicatedJan 6, 20222 min read

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“It’ll probably be down before it crosses Mexico and a few miles into Texas,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

“Most of the world is ocean, so it’s just playing the odds,” McDowell said.

Although the South Pacific landing site was also reported by the website Satflare, previous predictions said that if the rocket’s course were to alter, various parts of the United States could have been within range.

One potential area was in California, Nevada, Montana and Idaho; another in other parts of those states including Oregon; another reaching from Texas up to Wisconsin, and another along the Eastern Seaboard from Florida to Maine.

Holger Krag, the head of the European Space Agency’s Space Debris Office, said before re-entry that it was unlikely the rocket would injure anyone, “the risk is real and cannot be ignored.”

The rocket is the upper stage of a Russian-built Angara A5 rocket that is Russia’s latest vehicle for launching objects into Space.

An engine malfunction left the booster rocket adrift in a low-Earth orbit.

Although the piece of the rocket that was coming to Earth was around 23 feet long and weighed about four tons, experts said most of it would burn up upon re-entry.

“You might get a few hundred kilograms surviving to the surface,” McDowell said. “Most of it will melt, but some of the denser engine parts will probably survive.”

Last year, a multi-ton Chinese rocket fell to Earth in an uncontrolled orbit, leading the U.S. to condemn China.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.