A lot of Spanish airports have closed their airspace due to an out-of-control Chinese rocket weighing more than 20 tonnes that is expected to crash on Earth.
Flights between the Balearic Islands and the UK are said to be the worst affected, with delays at Barcelona Airport expected to last the entire day on Friday.
There are reports that other regions, such as La Rioja and Castilla and Leon, have also been affected, and flights into and out of Tarragona, Ibiza, and Reus are known to have been grounded. High alert has also been issued for the airport in Marseille, France.
“Flights in Catalonia and other communities have been completely restricted from 09:38 a.m. to 10:18 a.m. due to the risk associated with the passage of the space object CZ-5B through Spanish airspace,” the service said on Twitter.
“Eurocontrol has informed us about the non-controlled re-entry of a Chinese rocket into the Earth’s atmosphere…Rate Zero has been established for certain parts of Spanish airspace and that could affect air traffic by way of delays and diversions,” Spanish air traffic controllers tweeted.
Although a few reports claim that locations like Ibiza could experience the effect for up to three hours, the measure is anticipated to last for about 40 minutes.
The Long March 5B (CZ-5B), China’s most powerful rocket, lifted off from southern China on Oct. 31 to deliver the final module of the Chinese space station, which is currently under construction.
The majority of the rocket is expected to burn up on re-entry as gravity pulls it back to Earth, though there are concerns that significant chunks may survive.
The European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking service predicted that the debris would most likely re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in the middle of the Atlantic and land in the sea, but it also warned that northern Spain, Portugal, and southern Italy were all within the rocket’s potential trajectory.
On its first launch, fragments of the rocket landed on the Ivory Coast, damaging several buildings in that West African country but causing no injuries.
The debris from the second flight landed safely in the Indian Ocean, while remnants from the third fell into the Philippines’ Sulu Sea.
When asked if China had taken measures to reduce the risks, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, said at a regular briefing on Friday that the rocket’s re-entry into the atmosphere is a common international practice.
“It is understood that the type of rocket you mentioned employs special technology designed to ensure that the vast majority of components are destroyed by ablation during re-entry into the atmosphere, and the probability of causing harm to aviation activities and the ground is extremely low,” Zhao said.
