An out-of-control Chinese rocket has crashed into the Southern Pacific Ocean, after Britain readied the emergency alert system over fears of falling debris.
Earlier today, the UK government asked mobile network providers to ensure the alert system is operational, in preparation for a potential impact.
However, the rocket has now safely landed in the ocean some 1,200 miles (2,000 km) southeast of New Zealand.
The rocket, a Chinese Zhuque–3 launched in early December, crashed to Earth at 12:39 GMT, according to the US Space Force.
With an estimated mass of 11 tonnes, the EU’s Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST) agency had cautioned that ZQ–3 R/B was ‘quite a sizeable object deserving careful monitoring.’
While the vast majority of space debris which falls on Earth either burns up in the atmosphere or is never found, experts say we can be certain this rocket fell safely.
Dr Marco Lanbroek, a debris tracking expert from the Delft University of Technology, says he ‘strongly suspects’ that the US Space Force observed the re-entry fireball using a space-based satellite.
This puts an end to intense uncertainty over the rocket’s potential landing site, after predictions suggested it could hit Northern Europe and the UK.
The rocket was launched by private space firm LandSpace from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China’s Gansu Province on December 3, 2025.
The experimental rocket, dubbed ZQ–3 R/B, successfully reached orbit, but its reusable booster stage, modelled after the SpaceX Falcon 9, exploded during landing.
The upper stages and its ‘dummy’ cargo, in the form of a large metal tank, have been slowly slipping out of orbit.
The rocket’s shallow angle of re–entry had made it extremely difficult to predict exactly where any of the pieces might fall.
At the time, Professor Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer from the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and expert on tracking space debris, told the Daily Mail: ‘It will pass over the Inverness–Aberdeen area at 1200 UTC, so there’s a small – a few per cent – chance it could re–enter there, otherwise it won’t happen over the UK.’
It is not uncommon for pieces of rocket and satellite debris to fall to Earth, with debris passing over the UK about 70 times a month.
The overwhelming majority of the material is burned up upon re–entry due to friction with the atmosphere.
In some cases, very large pieces of debris or fragments of heat–resistant materials, such as stainless steel or titanium, can make it to Earth.
However, these pieces generally disperse over the oceans or unpopulated areas.
The government also stresses that the ‘readiness check’ conducted by the mobile network providers is a routine practice that does not indicate that an alert will be issued.
A UK government spokesperson told the Daily Mail: ‘It is extremely unlikely that any debris enters UK airspace.
‘As you’d expect, we have well rehearsed plans for a variety of different risks including those related to space, that are tested routinely with partners.’
While there is almost no chance that this falling rocket will cause damage to life or property, researchers have warned that the risk of space debris is increasing.
The only recorded case of someone being hit by space debris occurred in 1997, when a woman was struck but not hurt by a 16–gram piece of a US–made Delta II rocket.
As the number of commercial launches increases, so too does the volume of ‘uncontrolled’ re–entries.
A recent study by scientists at the University of British Columbia suggested that there is now a 10 per cent chance that one or more people will be killed by space junk in the next decade.
Likewise, researchers have increasingly warned that falling debris could pose a threat to air travel, with a 26 per cent chance of something falling through some of the world’s busiest airspace in any given year.
The actual chances of a plane being hit are currently very small, but a large piece of space junk could lead to widespread closures and travel chaos.
However, a 2020 study estimated that the risk of any given commercial flight being hit could rise to around one in 1,000 by 2030.
Nor is this the first time that a large Chinese–made rocket has unexpectedly crashed out of orbit.
In 2024, an almost complete Long March 3B booster stage fell over a village in a forested area of China’s Guangxi Province, exploding in a dramatic fireball.
WHAT IS SPACE JUNK? MORE THAN 170 MILLION PIECES OF DEAD SATELLITES, SPENT ROCKETS AND FLAKES OF PAINT POSE ‘THREAT’ TO SPACE INDUSTRY
There are an estimated 170 million pieces of so-called ‘space junk’ – left behind after missions that can be as big as spent rocket stages or as small as paint flakes – in orbit alongside some US$700 billion (£555bn) of space infrastructure.
But only 27,000 are tracked, and with the fragments able to travel at speeds above 16,777 mph (27,000kmh), even tiny pieces could seriously damage or destroy satellites.
However, traditional gripping methods don’t work in space, as suction cups do not function in a vacuum and temperatures are too cold for substances like tape and glue.
Grippers based around magnets are useless because most of the debris in orbit around Earth is not magnetic.
Most proposed solutions, including debris harpoons, either require or cause forceful interaction with the debris, which could push those objects in unintended, unpredictable directions.
Scientists point to two events that have badly worsened the problem of space junk.
The first was in February 2009, when an Iridium telecoms satellite and Kosmos-2251, a Russian military satellite, accidentally collided.
The second was in January 2007, when China tested an anti-satellite weapon on an old Fengyun weather satellite.
Experts also pointed to two sites that have become worryingly cluttered.
One is low Earth orbit which is used by satnav satellites, the ISS, China’s manned missions and the Hubble telescope, among others.
The other is in geostationary orbit, and is used by communications, weather and surveillance satellites that must maintain a fixed position relative to Earth.
