Space junk from Chinese rocket was about 15 minutes from hitting NYC
By Tamar Lapin
May 12, 2020 | 9:24pm | Updated
Chunks of the massive Chinese rocket that recently took an uncontrolled plunge back into the Earth’s atmosphere narrowly missed hitting New York City, according to a report.
Had the Long March 5B rocket re-entered the atmosphere about 15 to 20 minutes earlier on Monday, it would have rained debris on the nation’s largest metro area, according to Ars Technica, a technology-focused publication.
The about 100-foot-long rocket was launched on May 5, carrying an unnamed prototype of a newly designed Chinese crew capsule.
After about a week in orbit, the 20-ton core stage of the rocket fell back into the atmosphere around 11 a.m., moving at thousands of miles per hour and largely burning up on its way down.
A bit of the spacecraft about the size of a small bus splashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of West Africa, according to the US Space Command, which was tracking the re-entry.
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https://nypost.com/2020/05/12/space-junk-from-chinese-rocket-narrowly-missed-hitting-nyc/