California / Burning object mystery solved

A large piece of space junk crashed into Earth over Southern California on April 2, putting on quite a show for Golden State watchers. The fall of the object created a fiery fireball that was visible from Sacramento to San Diego, the US Weather Service (AMS) reported.

As of Tuesday afternoon, 81 people had reported the incident to AMS.

The debris was the orbital module of the Chinese spacecraft Shenzhou 15, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell. Shenzhou 15 launched three astronauts to the country’s Tiangong space station in November 2022.

Shenzhou’s orbital module, which weighs about 1,500 kilograms, provides extra space for astronauts to conduct scientific experiments in space, and is not designed to return to Earth safely after its mission ends. Shenzhou’s reentry module is built to do this, with the astronauts on board.

Of course, most people who saw the fireball cross the sky around 1:40 A.M. local time they didn’t know what it was about.

Some thought it might be a piece of SpaceX hardware, which would be a reasonable guess since a Falcon 9 rocket had launched 22 of the company’s Starlink internet satellites from Vandenberg Space Base on California’s central coast six months earlier. hours.

The burning debris could not have been the main part of the Falcon 9, as it lands safely after launch and is reused, but the rocket’s upper stage, which is disposable.

The Shenzhou 15 orbital module was neither the first large piece of Chinese space junk to crash back to Earth in dramatic fashion, nor the largest.

The 23-ton core of the country’s powerful Long March 5B rocket, whose launches helped build the Tiangong space station, usually falls to Earth in an uncontrolled fashion.

These debris crashes drew negative criticism from various people in the space community, including the heads of NASA and the European Space Agency, who accused the Chinese of being irresponsible and potentially dangerous.

Source: newsbeast.gr