
Why does a rocket break up in space? Rockets burn huge amounts of fuel very quickly to reach escape velocity of at least 25,000 mph (7 miles per second or 40,000 km/h), which is how fast something needs to go to break away from the pull of Earth’s gravity.
Did the Chinese rocket hit Earth yet? A big piece of Chinese space junk has crashed back to Earth. The 25-ton (22.5 metric tons) core stage of a Long March 5B rocket reentered Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean this afternoon (July 30), ending its brief but controversial orbital stay.
Where did the rocket booster land? BEIJING — Debris from a rocket that boosted part of China’s new space station into orbit fell into the sea in the Philippines on Sunday, the Chinese government announced. Most of the final stage of the Long March-5B rocket burned up after entering the atmosphere at 12:55 a.m., the China Manned Space Agency reported.
Did SpaceX lose a rocket? In late 2020 and early 2021, SpaceX lost four prototypes of the Starship itself in a series of high-altitude test launches when the return landing attempts ended in explosions. The Starship prototype finally made a safe touchdown in May 2021.