The Chinese space agency said on Sunday that a significant portion of a Chinese rocket re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and crumbled over the Indian Ocean, ending weeks of debate about where the 18-tonne object would crash.

Officials in Beijing had stated that the freefalling portion of the Long March-5B rocket, that has launched the first module of China's new space station into Earth orbit on April 29, posed little danger.

Even so, the US space agency NASA and some analysts said China had acted irresponsibly since an unregulated re-entry of this kind of massive object would have resulted in destruction and fatalities.

"After tracking and review, the last-stage debris of the Long March 5B Yao-2 launch vehicle re-entered the atmosphere at 10:24 (0224 GMT) on May 9, 2021," the China Manned Space Engineering Office said in a statement, giving coordinates for the point in the Indian Ocean near the Maldives.

It went on to say that the majority of the section crumbled and was demolished during the fall.

The rocket "re-entered over the Arabian Peninsula at about 10:15 p.m. EDT on May 8 (0215 GMT Sunday)," according to the US military's Space Command.

Space-Track, a monitoring service that uses US military data, stated that the position in Saudi Arabia was also where American systems last reported it.

Given that water covers 70% of the earth, the segment's collapse mirrored analyst estimates that any debris may have splashed down into the ocean.

Since it was an unpredictable fall, there was a lot of confusion about where the debris would end up.

Space agencies in the United States and Europe are also among the monitoring the rocket and attempting to forecast its re-entry.

Accusations of negligence

When objects enter the atmosphere, they produce enormous quantities of heat and pressure, which triggered them to catch fire and crumble. However, larger ones, such as the Long March-5B, could not be fully destroyed.

Their debris may drop on the planet's surface, causing damage and injuries, but this possibility is minimal.

Last year, wreckage from another Chinese Long March rocket crashed on Ivory Coast villages, inflicting structural damage but no casualties or fatalities.

According to information from Harvard-based astronomer Jonathan McDowell, this but the one that fell Sunday is matched for the fourth-largest objects in history to experience an unregulated re-entry.

The confusion and threats associated with such a re-entry prompted allegations that Beijing had acted carelessly.

Last week, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin indicated that China was already careless, and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson agreed following the re-entry on Sunday.

China's space ambitions

To escape such situations, several experts have suggested redesigning the Long March-5B rocket, which does not have a controlled descent.

Even so, Chinese authorities had underplayed the danger.

Beijing has invested billions of dollars in space exploration in order to improve its global standing and technical prowess.

The deployment of the first module of its space station by the Long March rocket, which landed Sunday, was a game changer in the country's ambitious attempt to create a permanent human footprint in space.