Brief: Down in the debris of the Space Race
The physical and political significance of a Chinese rocket’s “out-of-control” fall:
The core booster stage of a falling Chinese rocket made an uncontrolled re-entry to earth on the 9th May, with its debris falling into the Indian Ocean. Previously it was estimated it may crash anywhere between the 8th and 12th of May, with its landing point unknown until the final few hours of re-entry. According to Harvard University Astrophysicist Johnathon McDowell, the risk to persons or property was small, but “not negligible” and it was “not a good situation” for the world to be in. Its crash makes it one of the largest instances of uncontrolled re-entry of an object from orbit. While this time it crashed into the ocean, there was a very real risk that it could fall on an inhabited area, and tracking the predicted position of such falls to mitigate any damage is still incredibly difficult. In May 2020 the same type of Chinese rocket crashed in an uncontrolled fall into the Atlantic Ocean on Africa’s west coast, however during the process elements of its disintegration were showered over villages along the Ivory Coast, damaging several buildings. That no human injuries were caused was “very lucky” according to experts.
Against international norms, but not law:
This risk of significant debris is due to the rocket's size and China’s unique approach to de-orbiting its space assets. The Long March 5b is one of China’s “largest and heaviest” spacecraft, its core boosters weigh around 22 tons. This makes it too large to completely burn up as it falls from orbit, and on re-entry, it instead breaks into a shower of debris equivalent to “that of a small plane crash”. These debris can come down in a narrow trail over 100 miles long, as happened in the same context last year when “big long rods of metal” struck buildings along the Ivory Coast. For this reason, most space operators do not let assets weighing more than ten tons fall deliberately uncontrolled from orbit, as China consistently does.
While there is no international agreement or law mandating controlled landings, it is considered an international norm and agencies go to “quite fair lengths” to uphold it, taking on board the extra costs to make sure uncontrolled de-orbits do not happen intentionally. Instead, the first rocket stages are designed to not fly too high or too fast and to remain suborbital, so that when the core boosters work is done, it lands in a controlled, predictable way, usually using parachutes, and can be recovered safely.
China however goes against this approach and specifically designs its large rocket’s sections to go straight up into orbit, where the spent core boosters are left behind in an unpredictable and unsustainable deteriorating orbit leading to an uncontrolled crash. Beijing publicly states that it expects such rockets to simply burn up on re-entry, but in practice, China relies on the simple fact that the earth is large and so the falling debris are unlikely to hit anything controversial. This is not impossible though, in 2019 Long March 3B debris hit a Chinese village in Sichuan province to devastating effect.
Image of a Chinese Long March 5 carrier rocket taking off from Wenchang Launch Site, 24/7/2020, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
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The Astropolitical blast-back surrounding the falling rocket- the big picture:
China’s rocket was delivering the first module of Beijing’s own continuously human inhabited space station, expected to be operational by 2022. The station heralds an end to an era of international orbital cooperation with the International Space Station (ISS) as the sole continuous habitat, and the beginning of multilateral competition. Russia plans to pull out of the ISS by 2025 and begin work on its own station. This fragmenting of human efforts in orbit has both a positive and negative lens.
The positive is that it highlights the growing importance governments are placing on space as a new scientific and economic frontier. Spending across all space-interested nations has increased dramatically over the past few years, with global government spending rising to $70.9 billion in 2018 and. despite a global pandemic, soaring to $82.5 billion in 2020. This is likely influenced by the potential returns of asteroid mining, and the growing feasibility of Luna and Mars exploration and exploitation. An international project such as the ISS came from an era when pooling costs into a single enterprise was deemed necessary due to the lack of medium-term commercial prospects from space, while today's increasing activity, and larger budgets equate to greater and more dynamic economic and scientific opportunities for humanity in space.
The negative perspective though is that the ISS represents international collaboration in space. The loss of Russia in 2025, and China’s lack of representation epitomizes the competitiveness of the new multipolar Space Race. The US actually started this trend, banning China from participating on the ISS, and NASA from cooperating with China’s National Space Administration in 2011. This was in response to concerns over technology sharing, and China’s 2007 anti-satellite missile test whose lack of safeguards resulted in the second-largest creation of dangerous space debris in history. Because of this contention, China went its own way in space exploration with its independent actions kick-starting the current Space Race. Since then a lack of cooperation and growing competition between China and the US has defined the framework of the revitalization of Space. Both states are currently building their own competing political-legal frameworks for the rules surrounding space exploration and exploitation, rather than cooperating to produce an international rule set.
This divide has also made updating the 1967 Outer Space Treaty to be fit for a modern space-scape of wide-scale, and increasingly private enterprise, activity nearly impossible. As states are concerned with handicapping their own efforts through treaties that others may not agree to or be trusted to adhere to. The future of space exploration then could be increasingly polarized and lead to tensions on earth, and a relative free-for-all among the stars.
The Geopolitical blast-back surrounding the falling rocket- the immediate issues:
With this in mind the US response to the most recent uncontrolled fall of a Chinese rocket- calling for “responsible space behaviours'', is multipurpose. While it is an international chastisement of China’s current de-orbiting doctrine, and the dangers it presents to life and property. It also is part of the push to establish internationally recognized laws and mandated practices, but under the aegis of US direction, which because of the astropolitical competition means China is unlikely to be receptive.
This is an issue as, beyond the political wrangling, a lack of legally enforceable best practice surrounding space flight represents a physical danger. It is a risk that will only grow too as time goes on and national and private space-related activity increases. In 2020 satellite deployments were up 477% compared to 2019, with orbital launches steadily increasing too. While the chances are small currently of a serious accident, they will not always be so in the near future. The only current incentivisation to prevent dangerous practice is the Outer-Space treaties Article VII which makes the owner liable for any damages. However, it's fairly vague in scope and has only been utilized once, and even then with much wrangling over costs. It is not a normative deterrent fit for purpose- made clear by China not being too bothered by their deorbit doctrine.
Space powers on all sides should take heed, as public tolerance historically and recently for spending on space activities is at best lukewarm and can rapidly drop. Activity that results in danger, damage or harm would not be well received, and could create political problems even in states like China where the government has a firmer grip on the national agenda. There is a real possibility that without a truly global approach to safety and its enforcement, that the space industry’s development of a whole new economic and scientific frontier will be stalled once again.