Danger escaped. The debris of the second stage of the Chinese Long March rocket fell into the Indian Ocean, near the Maldives islands, which for 48 hours held half the world in suspense: most of the 18-ton wreck disintegrated on contact with the atmosphere, shortly after 4 am Italian time. It was feared that the debris of the rocket, launched by China to bring the first stage of the future international space station “made in Beijing” into orbit, could end up in the Mediterranean basin. The size of the object, 30 meters long, and the speed at which it traveled, 28 thousand kilometers per hour, had prompted the activation of all the most important space surveillance services in the world, from the Pentagon to the space monitoring and surveillance service of the European Union. For its part, China, very discreet on the matter, had assured that it was “highly unlikely” that the remains of the rocket would cause damage and that it was more plausible that the rocket would disintegrate on contact with the atmosphere. Fortunately it was.
It is not the first time that a Chinese probe has been targeted by space surveillance services around the world. In 2020, debris from another Long March rocket crashed into an area of villages in the Ivory Coast, causing damage but fortunately no injuries. The Tiangong-1 space laboratory – decommissioned since 2016 and wandering uncontrollably in space – disintegrated upon re-entering the atmosphere in 2018 (and the Chinese authorities have always denied having lost control of the vehicle). China has invested several billion dollars in its very important space program: it sent its first astronaut to space in 2003 and a Chinese probe landed on the opposite side of the moon in 2019, a world first. In the coming weeks, he will try to place a small robot on wheels on Mars. Finally, the most ambitious project, to build a base on the Moon together with Russia.