A runaway Russian rocket hurtles toward the earth.
The rocket was part of a test conducted by the Russian space agency last week. While initially touted as a success, the top of the rocket did not burn off properly and a section of the space shuttle is now coming back to Earth.
The development of the Angara A5 rocket from Russia it has already faced difficulties. It had a successful first flight in 2014, but it wasn’t launched again until another successful flight in 2020 – the last launch was the follow-up, and the last of its test flights was with a new upper stage mounted on it.
That upper stage, called Persei, was supposed to carry a dummy payload into a higher, stable orbit, as it would when used for full launches. But that didn’t happen, and the Persei stage and its payload began to fall back to Earth.
Trackers show the object is about 87 miles (140 kilometers) away and is falling at high speed. Its speed and the uncontrolled nature of the descent make it difficult to predict where and when it might land.
Most of the debris is likely to burn when the rocket reaches the atmosphere, and any pieces will likely be too small to cause significant damage. But it is another example of hazardous space debris falling back to Earth after a rocket chino The closely monitored made the same trip last year, following numerous expert warnings about the impact of pieces of uncontrolled spacecraft.
Like that Chinese rocket, the Long March 5B, the Russian spacecraft is believed to weigh about 20 tons. But much of the new rocket’s mass is made up of propellant fuel, which will burn up in the atmosphere, making any potential damage less likely.
China’s rocket eventually fell to the Indian Ocean, after a heavily monitored descent to Earth.