China says most rocket debris burned up during reentry

China's space agency said a core segment of its biggest rocket reentered Earth's atmosphere above the Maldives in the Indian Ocean and almost all of it burned off early Sunday. Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who tracked the tumbling rocket part, said on Twitter, "An ocean reentry was always statistically the probably. It seems China won its gamble… Nonetheless it was still reckless."

China's official Xinhua News Agency said reentry occurred at 7:24 p.m. local time Saturday. "Almost all items were burned beyond recognition through the reentry process," the report said. Even though, NASA Administrator Sen. Bill Nelson issued a statement saying: "It is clear that China is failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris." Usually, discarded rocket stages reenter the atmosphere soon after liftoff, normally over water, and do not get into orbit. The Long March 5B rocket carried the primary module of Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony, into orbit on April 29. China plans 10 more launches to transport additional parts of the area station into orbit.

The roughly 30-meter (100-foot) -long stage will be among the biggest space debris to fall to Earth.

The 18-ton rocket that fell last May was the heaviest debris to fall uncontrolled because the former Soviet space station Salyut 7 in 1991.

China's first space station, Tiangong-1, crashed in to the Pacific Ocean in 2016 after Beijing confirmed it had lost control. In 2019, the space agency manipulated the demolition of its second station, Tiangong-2, in the atmosphere. In March, debris from a Falcon 9 rocket launched by U.S. aeronautics company SpaceX fell to Earth in Washington and on the Oregon coast.