CHINA COULD HAVE CONTROLLED RE-ENTRY WITH DESIGN
China could have designed their rocket so it had a controlled re-entry – but choose not to, experts have said.
The rocket is currently hurtling at 18,000 mph back towards Earth and is likely to crash down somewhere in the Indian Ocean or Pacific on Sunday.
However, there is a small probability it could hit land and an even small risk it could crash into a populated area.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, said the rocket’s free fall was “negligent” and “irresponsible”.
Dr McDowell said China could have designed the rocket to fall in a way it posed no danger, but it was an “engineering decision based on probabilities”.
Ted J. Muelhaupt, principal director of Aerospace’s Center for Orbital and Re-entry Debris Studies, told The New York Times: “It’s not a trivial thing to design something for a deliberate re-entry, but it’s nevertheless something that the world as a whole has moved to because we needed to.”
