A piece of Chinese space junk arrived on Earth near New Zealand

Exceptionally a large piece of space debris arrived on Earth near New Zealand on Friday.

It is about the second stage of the Chinese launch vehicle, i.e. part of the rocket launched into space. It made an uncontrolled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere on Friday.

According to the US Space-Track estimate, the debris entered the Earth’s atmosphere in the sea area southeast of New Zealand on Friday afternoon Finnish time, says the Finnish Meteorological Institute Space Situation Center.

According to Space-Track’s forecast, the debris entered the atmosphere at 14:39 Finnish time. The uncertainty of the forecast is only a minute in one direction or the other, so this can be considered a final estimate, the center says.

ZQ 3 R/B -kantoraquetin the second phase had an estimated mass of about 11 tons and a length of 12–13 meters. In other words, it was about the size of a bus.

However, Sei was not expected to fall to the ground “under any circumstances” in one piece, but to break into pieces of different sizes, Director of the Space Situation Center Ari-Matti Harri told HS earlier. Most of the fragments burn up in the atmosphere.

Harri said earlier that such objects usually fall into the sea, because most of the Earth’s surface is oceans.

After entering the atmosphere, the object would fall to the ground in about a quarter of an hour, he estimated.

Chinese the launch vehicle was launched on December 3.

Although an uncontrollable fall may sound dramatic, according to Harri, it is a fairly common situation.

According to him, what was exceptional in this case was mainly the larger-than-average size of the piece.

The song was so big that its progress was followed worldwide.