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China says remnants of rocket about to re-enter atmosphere

China says remnants of rocket about to re-enter atmosphere
May 9, 2021

BEIJING (Reuters) — The remnants of China’s Long March 5B rocket are set to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere at 10:12 a.m. Beijing time (10:12 p.m. EDT Saturday), plus or minus 15 minutes, the China Manned Space Engineering Office said on Sunday.

The debris from the rocket will make its re-entry over a location at longitude 28.38 degrees east and latitude 34.43 degrees north, China Manned Space Engineering Office said in a post on its official social media account.

The coordinates put the point of re-entry somewhere over the Mediterranean Sea.

US Space Command estimated re-entry would occur at 2:11 a.m. GMT on Sunday (10:11 p.m. EDT Saturday), plus or minus one hour, while the Center for Orbital Reentry and Debris Studies (CORDS) at Aerospace Corporation, a U.S. federally funded space-focused research and development centre, updated its prediction to two hours either side of 3:02 a.m. GMT (11:02 p.m. EDT Saturday) with the rocket re-entering over the Pacific.