Return reported for the first time The second stage of the Chinese missile Long March 2D(opens in a new tab)News from the United States Naval Institute (USNI) on March 9. According to reports from USNI News, the four-ton part of the missile entered the atmosphere from the southwest corner of Texas at 17,000 mph (27,400 km/h) on March 7 at approximately 9:30 PM (March 8, 0230 GMT). ) after falling from low Earth orbit. The US Space Command later issued a statement approving re-entry to the USNI.

After the incident, a Space.com reader emailed us photos and video of an atmospheric line of fire taken in south Texas as the body of the Chinese rocket entered the atmosphere. Images and video clearly show debris burning in Earth’s atmosphere, consistent with previous rocket reentry events, but as with purely photographic evidence, it’s difficult to pinpoint what exactly these might or might not represent.

The video and footage were captured by Kylie McMillan, a college student from Waco, Texas while camping in Boquillas Canyon in south Texas, near the US-Mexico border.

“I went on spring break with a group of other students when I noticed this in the sky,” McMillan told Space.com. “It was moving pretty fast, and I think we only saw it for 30 to 45 seconds before it disintegrated in the atmosphere. The first time I saw it over the canyon it was a bright orange-red, but it kept falling. It got smaller and darker.”

The most embarrassing of such incidents concerned the approximately 22-ton Long March 5B first-stage rocket that China used to build the Tiangong space station in low Earth orbit. The Long March 5B cores are not designed to be safely dumped into the ocean or reused after payload delivery, as are many new rocket designs such as SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

USNI News said in a statement to the US Space Command that although the March 7 incident did not cause any damage, the return of this stage of a Chinese missile over Texas “reinforces the need for better international regulations for high-risk uncontrolled air intakes.”