Last weekend, the second stage of a Russian rocket re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. The event was recorded by dozens of spectators in southern Texas and Mexico. According to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the part of the Russian Souyuz rocket, which put the mysterious Kosmos-2543 satellite into orbit.
It was possible to see an impressive fireball in the sky, but McDowell explains that this is a very common occurrence. According to him, there have been thousands of reentries like this. Although it is rare, some parts of the spacecraft can survive re-entry and fall to the ground. This happened with China’s Long March 5B in May: the rocket’s main stage re-entered the atmosphere and landed in the Atlantic Ocean.
In this case, it was possible to recover the scrap of almost 20 tonnes. Speaking of parts rescue, on Monday, SpaceX recovered both halves of the fairing that protects the cargo on the nose of the Falcon 9 rocket. This was the first time the company has managed to do this.
Earth rocket Russia atmosphere