![]() ![]() In both cases, McDowell said he believed the debris was from Chinese rocket stages that had been launched several months earlier. On May 12, residents in several parts of Gujarat's Anand district discovered scattered bits of debris after hearing loud thuds. The ring and other objects were found on the same day as several eyewitnesses in India's Maharashtra region reported streaks of light that moved slowly across the sky. On April 2, a 40kg (88lb) metal ring was found to have thumped into the ground in the village of Ladbori, startling locals. Two incidents have been reported in India in recent months, apparently caused by rockets not disintegrating fully on re-entry. It's not the first time this year that rocket debris has caused alarm. A substantial portion of the 22-ton launch vehiclethe core stage of a Long March 5B rocket. "If they're meteors, they're much faster than that," Quicke said. This weekend, a spent, 100-foot-long Chinese rocket is set to plunge through Earth’s atmosphere. McDowell's comments were echoed by Greg Quicke, a Broome-based astronomer, who told the Australian network that the debris looked like space junk based on the slow pace at which it seemed to move across the sky, as seen in video footage posted online. Russian Space Debris Almost Obliterates European Satellite Parts of Chinas Long March rocket have landed in the Indian Ocean, but NASA says the country did not follow 'best practices' to minimise risk by knowing where the debris might fall.Both the timing and direction of the lights observed this week match up with this, he said. He said he had tracked the rocket's path using public information supplied by the United States Space Command and the rocket's path would have taken it over Broome and across northern Australia. McDowell told ABC that the lights seen by Australians were likely debris from part of a Chinese Long March 3 rocket that had been launched last summer to deliver a satellite into orbit. ![]() Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is an expert on the topic of space debris. "You could hear from quite a mile away."Īstronomers have allayed concerns that the lights were missiles or anything else sinister. "Probably a minute later we just heard these massive big booms," he told 10 News First Perth. A Long March 3 rocket may have been responsible for space debris spotted over parts of Australia this week. A Chinese Long March 5 rocket blasts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in July 2020. ![]()
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