China’s most powerful rocket falls back to Earth, lands in criticism
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China said its most powerful rocket fell back to Earth, as NASA criticized Beijing for failing to share crucial data about its trajectory.
The Long March 5B rocket, which weighs more than 1.8 million pounds, blasted off from the Wenchang spaceport on July 24 — carrying another module to China’s first permanent space station, Tiangong, which is in the process of being constructed.
The “vast majority” of the rocket’s debris burned up during reentry into the atmosphere at about 12:55 a.m., the China Manned Space Agency said Sunday in a statement on its official Weibo social media account.
The rest “landed in the sea” at 119.0 degrees East and 9.1 degrees North, it said. These coordinates are in the waters off the Philippine island of Palawan, southeast of the city of Puerto Princesa. China’s statement did not say whether any debris fell on land.
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