Close to 40 Australian cricketers, coaches, and support staff quarantining in the Maldives after the IPL 2021 was suspended by the BCCI mid-way were rattled and shocked by the debris of the Chinese rocket falling in the ocean near the Maldives.

The Aussies, including Test stars Steve Smith, David Warner, and Pat Cummins, are quarantining at a resort in the Maldives were in for a surprise.

“We heard the bang around 5.30 a.m. this morning (Sunday). Experts say the noise we heard is the crack in the atmosphere which sets off a wave of sound not the actual impact of the rocket,” Warner told The Australian from the Maldives.

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China had, on April 29, launched a module for setting up its first permanent space station in orbit and it was known that the rockets carrying the main module would re-enter the earth’s atmosphere around Saturday or Sunday. The China Manned Space Engineering Office had allayed global fears that the falling debris would cause any damage, saying that most of the debris “would burn up in the atmosphere”.

However, the uncontrolled re-entry of the rocket in Earth’s atmosphere and remnants falling at a few locations in the Maldives, has drawn flak from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

(News18 inputs)