Financial Timesįollowing Tesla’s lead, companies in Asia are starting to bet big on crypto. They say that reporting from western media outlets about the erosion of democratic freedoms in the city has prompted head offices in their home markets to divest from Hong Kong offices. Now, Hong Kong-based international business executives believe that western reporters may be their greatest threat to doing business in the financial hub. In recent years, multinational corporations operating in Hong Kong have been caught in a bind amid rising U.S.-China tensions, Hong Kong 2019 protest movement, and Beijing’s increasing stranglehold over city affairs. McDowell was less diplomatic, telling SpaceNews that, by current standards, “it’s unacceptable to let reenter uncontrolled.” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said “the United States is committed to addressing the risks of growing congestion due to space debris and growing activity in space and we want to work with the international community to promote leadership and responsible space behaviors.” The Biden administration refrained from criticizing China directly for this week’s uncontrolled reentry. ![]() The only larger incidents of uncontrolled space junk crashing back to Earth are the 1979 reentry of NASA’s wounded 77-ton Skylab space station, which scattered chunks into the Indian Ocean and over parts of western Australia the 1975 reentry of Skylab’s rocket stage and the 1991 reentry of the Soviet Union’s abandoned 43-ton Salyut 7 space station. Earlier incarnations of Long March rockets have showered fragments on Chinese villages. In May 2020, the core stage of another Long March 5B, weighing in at 18 tons, plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off the northwestern coast of Africa, raining debris over two villages in Côte d’Ivoire. SpaceNews, citing Harvard University astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, reports that the Long March 5B is “ the most massive uncontrolled reentry in decades and the fourth-biggest ever.” The vessel could burn up entirely as it reenters Earth’s atmosphere. Since most of the planet is ocean, that’s almost certainly where any debris would fall. The Pentagon says it is almost impossible to predict where the stage will drop.Įxperts have estimated the range of the Long March’s descent as extending as far north as New York, Madrid and Beijing, and as far south as Chile and Wellington, New Zealand. The rocket stage is huge-about 100 feet long and 16 feet wide-and racing around the planet every 90 minutes. Defense Department spokesman said Wednesday that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is being briefed regularly on the trajectory of the craft, the core stage of a Long March 5B rocket, which carried the main module of China’s third space station, called Tiangong, into orbit on April 29. ![]() ![]() The Pentagon says it’s tracking the orbit of a 21-ton Chinese rocket stage that will tumble into Earth’s atmosphere sometime on Saturday-and could possibly burst into a hail of space junk over a major metropolitan area.Ī U.S.
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