China’s Long March 5 launches classified satellite; core stage liable to crash anywhere on Earth
China today used its most powerful rocket, the Long March 5, to place a classified military satellite into a high orbit, lifting off from its Wenchang coastal spaceport.
Assuming the rocket headed south or east from Wenchang, its strap-on boosters will fall harmlessly in the ocean. However, based on past Long March 5 launches, the core first stage will reach an unstable low orbit, release its upper stage and payload, and then fall back to Earth within a week or so. And it will be large enough to hit the ground. On past launches the rocket’s engines could not be restarted, so there was no way to control where it would crash. Had that core stage on one launch in 2020 come down 15 minutes earlier, it would have crashed in the New York metropolitan area.
Has China upgraded those engines so they can be restarted to put the stage down in a controlled manner over the ocean? We presently have no idea. Stay tuned because we all may face the possibility of this core stage hitting us.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
91 SpaceX
60 China
16 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 104 to 60, and the entire world combined 104 to 94. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 91 to 94.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
China today used its most powerful rocket, the Long March 5, to place a classified military satellite into a high orbit, lifting off from its Wenchang coastal spaceport.
Assuming the rocket headed south or east from Wenchang, its strap-on boosters will fall harmlessly in the ocean. However, based on past Long March 5 launches, the core first stage will reach an unstable low orbit, release its upper stage and payload, and then fall back to Earth within a week or so. And it will be large enough to hit the ground. On past launches the rocket’s engines could not be restarted, so there was no way to control where it would crash. Had that core stage on one launch in 2020 come down 15 minutes earlier, it would have crashed in the New York metropolitan area.
Has China upgraded those engines so they can be restarted to put the stage down in a controlled manner over the ocean? We presently have no idea. Stay tuned because we all may face the possibility of this core stage hitting us.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
91 SpaceX
60 China
16 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 104 to 60, and the entire world combined 104 to 94. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 91 to 94.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
If this LM5 payload was actually put into a high orbit, we shouldn’t have to worry about another randomly falling giant core stage. To get anything beyond LEO, the LM5 uses a second propulsion stage mounted above the core stage. The core stage, in this sort of ascent profile, doesn’t reach orbital velocity but, like the strap-on boosters, falls predictably into the sea.
The PRC’s problem child is the LM5A, which lacks an upper propulsion stage and uses just the core stage to put large payloads into LEO such as space station modules. The PRC, according to current plans, will be playing core stage roulette with LM5As at least four more times in the next few years as it launches three additional modules to its space station as well as its companion Hubble-class space telescope.
Dick Eagleson: You might be right, but I reserve judgment. Since the Chinese tell us nothing, we need to wait a few days to actually see what happens with that core stage.
Some of those picts ;look like sci-fi book covers from the 50’s