A Chinese rocket booster narrowly missed a school as it plummeted back to Earth following a successful rocket launch.
The Long March 4B rocket was launched into space yesterday, before its booster descended back down to the surface.
Shocking footage shared on Chinese social media site Weibo shows the booster narrowly missing a school in Lilong village, Gaoyao Town, before crashing and exploding.
A view from inside the town then shows a huge orange and yellow cloud of dust.
Thankfully, reports indicate that no-one was injured during the incident.
However, if the rocket booster had landed near any pedestrians, it could have been a disaster, according to space.com.
It explained: “The Long March 4B first stage uses a mix of toxic hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide for propellant. Contact with either could bring serious effects on health.”
The incident came shortly after the Long March 4B rocket lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre in China, at 13:57 local time (06:57 BST).
The rocket carried China’s Gaofen 11 Earth observation satellite - a satellite capable of returning high resolution images.
According to Chinese media, these images will mainly be used for land surveys, city planning, land rights confirmation, road network design, crop yield estimation and disaster prevention and mitigation.
The satellite will also offer information support for the Belt and Road construction, according to Xinhua.
