Chinese rocket re-enters Earth, burns up in skies over India

India, April 3: A streak, a blazing streak of light which appeared like a meteor shower, over several parts of Maharashtra was actually the remnants of a Chinese rocket re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, according to a US scientist.

US astronomer Jonathan McDowell said that the re-entry of the 3B rocket body was expected today.

I believe this is the reentry of a Chinese rocket stage, the third stage of the Chang Zheng 3B serial number Y77 which was launched in Feb 2021 – it was expected to reenter in the next hour or so and the track is a good match,” McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts said in a tweet.

The Long March 5 family of rockets have been integral to China’s near-term space ambitions from the delivery of modules and crew of its planned space station to launches of exploratory probes to the moon and even Mars.