Breaking News: According to data from satflare.com, the Chinese rocket booster is currently falling in altitude at about 100m/s. At the time of writing it is at ~130km above the Earth’s surface. The satellite is headed NE from a position SE of New Zealand.
Will it make it to North America? There is a lot of ocean between its current location and the nearest large land mass. If it can make it across Central America, Carribean islands would be threatened, but mainland North America is not along this orbit now.
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Update: EU SST just narrowed the window for the impact of the ZQ-3 R/B rocket booster. Impact is now expected at 11.20, +/- 40 mimutes, London time along an orbit that manages to place the object far enough north to avoid much, but not all, of Europe. However, the orbital path takes the 11-ton booster stage over Copenhagen and Vilnius.
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The EU Space Surveillance and Tracking (EU SST) unit announced on 29th September that a ZQ-3 R/B rocket booster is reentering the atmosphere and we don’t know where it will land. The booster is thought to be the second stage of a Chinese-made Zhuque-3 two stage medium-lift rocket with a dummy payload connected.
As of 23.00 UTC on 29th January, the EU SST had calculated that the booster was likely to re-enter the atmosphere at 10.32 UTC on the 30th. The map above shows the likely path for the booster during the calculated re-entry time.
We will update this article as new information comes in.
Published by James Hydzik
James Hydzik is a technology geek focused on the junction of engineering, writing, and coffee. He joined Orbital Today in 2020 to help make sense of the Johnson government’s decision to buy OneWeb. Since then, he has taken on interviewing and editor-in-chief roles. James learned the ropes of editing and writing with Financial Times magazines, The World Bank, PwC, and Ericsson. Thus far, interviewing New Space movers has put the biggest smile on his workaday face. The son of an Electrical Engineer, James understands the value of putting complex topics into clear language for those with a lay person’s understanding of the subject. James is a European transplant from the United States, and as ex-KA3LLL, he now holds European amateur radio licenses. His next radio project is a portable 10GHz EME (moonbounce) station, as it combines his childhood interests in antennas and space.