Chunks of China’s largest missile recently launched have ended up in the Indian Ocean, somewhere southwest of Sri Lanka and India, according to Chinese state media. The debris from the rocket is said to have entered the atmosphere at at 10.24 am Beijing time (02:24 GMT),
The Chinese argue that most of the debris from the launch vehicle was burned upon reentry and that it is highly unlikely that any damage was caused. The Long March 5B rocket launched part of a Chinese space station into space.
The rocket had been flying uncontrolled through space for over a week. It was inevitable that some of it would crash, but it was unclear exactly where that would happen.
It was not the first time that a Chinese missile fell back to Earth uncontrolled. In May last year, this happened in the Atlantic Ocean near the coast of West Africa. Despite this, large long metal bars flew through the air above Ivory Coast and several buildings in that country were damaged.