{"id":106955,"date":"2020-05-12T08:43:05","date_gmt":"2020-05-12T15:43:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/a-giant-piece-of-a-chinese-rocket-just-smashed-down-to-earth-in-an-uncontrolled-fall"},"modified":"2020-05-12T08:43:05","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T15:43:05","slug":"a-giant-piece-of-a-chinese-rocket-just-smashed-down-to-earth-in-an-uncontrolled-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/a-giant-piece-of-a-chinese-rocket-just-smashed-down-to-earth-in-an-uncontrolled-fall","title":{"rendered":"A Giant Piece of a Chinese Rocket Just Smashed Down to Earth in an Uncontrolled Fall"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-giant-piece-of-a-chinese-rocket-just-smashed-down-to-earth-in-an-uncontrolled-fall2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The remains of a giant segment of a Chinese rocket crash-landed in the Atlantic Ocean this week, representing the most significant uncontrolled descent of a piece of human-made space debris in decades.<\/p>\n<p>The core stage of a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Long_March_5#Fourth_flight_(CZ-5B)\">Chinese Long March 5B (CZ\u20135B) rocket<\/a>, which was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/china-s-new-experimental-spacecraft-launched-successfully\">successfully launched<\/a> on May 5, spent several days in orbit as part of its mission, before re-entering Earth\u2019s atmosphere and falling to Earth, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/planet4589\/status\/1259910216612827138\">splashing down<\/a> in ocean waters off the west coast of Mauritania in northwest Africa.<\/p>\n<p>The descent, which was eventually <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/18SPCS\/status\/1259891636189839360\">confirmed<\/a> by the 18th Space Control Squadron, a unit of the US Air Force, was notable not just for its huge mass, but also for the extent of the window of uncontrolled descent, which had space-object trackers guessing just where and when the out-of-control rocket would eventually land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The remains of a giant segment of a Chinese rocket crash-landed in the Atlantic Ocean this week, representing the most significant uncontrolled descent of a piece of human-made space debris in decades. The core stage of a Chinese Long March 5B (CZ\u20135B) rocket, which was successfully launched on May 5, spent several days in orbit [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106955","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=106955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}