{"id":106919,"date":"2020-05-11T10:45:11","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T17:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/a-chinese-rocket-is-out-of-control-and-falling-towards-earth-right-now"},"modified":"2020-05-11T10:45:11","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T17:45:11","slug":"a-chinese-rocket-is-out-of-control-and-falling-towards-earth-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/a-chinese-rocket-is-out-of-control-and-falling-towards-earth-right-now","title":{"rendered":"A Chinese Rocket Is Out Of Control And Falling Towards Earth Right Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-chinese-rocket-is-out-of-control-and-falling-towards-earth-right-now.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sometime in the next few hours, the body of a spent Chinese rocket will become the largest piece of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/lauratenenbaum\/2019\/05\/24\/space-junk-what-goes-up-might-not-come-down\/\" target=\"_self\" class=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/lauratenenbaum\/2019\/05\/24\/space-junk-what-goes-up-might-not-come-down\/\" aria-label=\"space junk\">space junk<\/a> in decades to fall, uncontrolled, back towards Earth.<\/p>\n<p>On May 5, a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Long_March_5\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Long_March_5\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" aria-label=\"Long March 5B rocket\">Long March 5B rocket<\/a> launched a prototype crew capsule resembling a SpaceX Crew Dragon to orbit for a test. Now, after almost a week orbiting the Earth, the core stage of the large rocket is on a collision course with the upper atmosphere and whatever doesn\u2019t burn up during its descent will impact the planet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is the most massive object to make an uncontrolled reentry since the 39-tonne Salyut-7 in 1991,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/planet4589\/status\/1258459016990253056\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/planet4589\/status\/1258459016990253056\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" aria-label=\"wrote Jonathan McDowell\">wrote Jonathan McDowell<\/a>, a prominent Harvard astrophysicist who tracks objects in orbit, on Twitter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometime in the next few hours, the body of a spent Chinese rocket will become the largest piece of space junk in decades to fall, uncontrolled, back towards Earth. On May 5, a Long March 5B rocket launched a prototype crew capsule resembling a SpaceX Crew Dragon to orbit for a test. Now, after almost [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}