SCMP: China’s rocket break-up sends space junk flying near Starlink orbit

[Hamartia Antidote]

China’s rocket break-up sends space junk flying near Starlink orbit

Beijing spokeswoman says space stations are unlikely to be affected by debris, confirming incident.

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The Chinese government confirmed on Monday that a spent Long March rocket broke up and scattered debris in a near-Earth orbit close to many of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites.

Responding to a question from The New York Times at a press conference in Beijing, foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning acknowledged reports of the incident on November 12.

According to the US Space Force, the Long March 6A rocket was between 500 to 700km (310 to 435 miles) from Earth when it disintegrated into more than 50 fragments.


The 500km orbit is used by thousands of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites while the International Space Station and China’s Tiangong space station operate at slightly lower altitudes.
“As far as we know, the relevant incident will not affect the Chinese space station or the International Space Station,” Mao said, without providing any further detail.

In reports ahead of the launch on Saturday, Chinese state media said the modified version of the Long March 6 was carrying a Yunhai-3 ocean observation satellite – equipped with some of the latest surveillance technologies – into an unspecified orbit.

It is unclear what caused the rocket to break up.

The Long March 6 is a small three-stage rocket fuelled by low-cost kerosene and uses mostly mature technology. China’s space authorities say it is their most reliable space launch vehicle.

It is also designed so that the rocket’s upper stage falls back to Earth in one piece to be be burned up in the atmosphere.

Astronomer Cees Bassa, from the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, said he observed more than 40 fragments “tumbling fast, giving very distinct flash patterns”.

Bassa said on Twitter that the rocket could have hit a piece of debris, or an explosion may have occurred when it tried to dump its fuel – standard practice before re-entry burn-up.

“It is good practice to either deorbit rocket upper stages after delivering its payload, or dump fuel overboard to prevent these catastrophic break-ups,” he wrote on Monday.

“The fact that the CZ-6A showed fuel on two successive orbits suggests something may have gone wrong with the fuel dump.”

Chinese military researchers have been urging the government to develop capabilities to destroy the Starlink satellite network, believing it could pose a threat to China’s national security, a concern that has increased significantly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

One proposed method is to generate space debris in a specific orbit, setting off a chain of collisions to bring down a large network.

A computer simulation by Chinese military researchers suggested that a thermal nuclear weapon detonated in near-space altitude could generate a radioactive cloud capable of reaching up to 500km, enough to cripple or destroy satellites.

But a Beijing-based space scientist said the weekend incident was most likely to have been unintentional because the debris could threaten China’s own space assets, including its brand new space station.

“The debris will fall back to Earth over the next few years, and the chance they will hit the space station is low. But I don’t think anyone would be willing to add to the risk, however small it is,” said the researcher, who asked not to be named because of the issue’s sensitivity.

“There are three Chinese astronauts up there. Soon there will be six.”