Chinese rocket debris unlikely to land in Malaysia, says space agency

PETALING JAYA: China's Long March 5B rocket debris which is expected to re-enter the earth's atmosphere is unlikely to land in Malaysia, says the Malaysian Space Agency (MYSA).

The agency said the re-entry is expected between July 30 and Aug 1 and presently, the fragments of the rocket were still in orbit, close to the re-entry zone.

"The rocket's present status (as of July 29) is at 201.15km above sea level with re-entry forecast between 39.1 latitude and 148.9 longitude," said the agency in a statement.

Rocket Long March 5B was launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft launch site, Wenchang, China on July 24 to send the 23,000kg Wentian module to the Tiangong Space Station.

"Due to the strong atmospheric drag to the orbit, the debris is expected to enter the earth's atmosphere a few days after the launch.

"Basically, the location of the re-entry of the debris can't be predicted accurately until a few hours prior to re-entry and in many cases, there will be a vast difference in the forecast due to the change in the physical characteristics of the object during re-entry, including location and speed.

It said that although the Long March 5B rocket was huge, most of the debris would be burnt during re-entry into the earth's atmosphere with only smaller fragments landing on earth.

"As such, the public need not be concerned about the dangers as 70% of it was water and Malaysia was a small entity compared to earth's mass area.

"Furthermore, the exact location of the re-entry currently can't be ascertained and MYSA will update on any development from time to time, " it added.