China Rocket Crashes Back on Earth, Draws NASA Rebuke

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Remnants of a massive Chinese rocket fell back to Earth over the Indian Ocean on Saturday, leading US space officials to again criticize China's lack of information-sharing about its boosters re-entering the atmosphere.

China's spaceflight agency said the vast majority of wreckage from the last stage of Long March 5B burned up upon re-entry. The US Space Command tweeted that while it could confirm the booster had re-entered over the Indian Ocean, it referred to China for details on technical aspects including impact location.

“The People's Republic of China did not share specific trajectory information as their Long March 5B rocket fell back to Earth,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said separately. “All space-faring nations should follow established best practices, and do their part to share this type of information in advance to allow reliable predictions of potential debris impact risk, especially for heavy-lift vehicles, like the Long March 5B, which carry a significant risk of loss of life and property.”

In the days before the crash, Western space experts warned about the uncontrolled descent of the rocket booster weighing 23 metric tons (25.4 tons). China is unusual in conducting launches that result in the uncontrolled re-entry of rocket segments, said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics, which is operated by Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution. The US and others design their rockets so that debris falls “in a very predictable location,” he said.

Aerospace Corp., an El Segundo, California-based nonprofit that provides technical advice for space missions and receives US funding, had said there was a “non-zero probability” that debris would land in a populated