China drops booster on village- AGAIN

The Chinese space agency has once again dropped a rocket booster on a village filled with hydrazine and hypergolic fuel- again.

The booster, from a Long March 2B rocket, launched the Sino- French SVOM satellite to orbit.

Developed by engineers from both countries, the Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) will find gamma-ray bursts, the light from which has travelled billions of light years to reach Earth.

The satellite successfully reached orbit, but what happened to the booster was another matter entirely.

The booster fell onto a village with orange hypergolic fuels spewing from its body.

Hypergolic fuels are widely used by the Chinese space agency due to their convinence and their ease to store. However, hypergolics, such as hydrazine and so on, are incredibly toxic. They are also known carcinogens, and have the ability to explode whenever they come into contact with each other. This behaviour is obviously incredibly reckless and it also puts civilians in danger of coming into contact with such chemicals, not to mention the chance of being squashed by the booster itself.

Current iterations of the Long March 2B have grid fins to steer their descent, but this particular one did not have them. CNSA, the Chinese space agency, also is experimenting with reusable rockets in the style of SpaceX to avoid this problem and bring launch costs down.