Chinese Rocket Stage Now a Cloud of Orbital Debris After Disintegrating in Space
upstart writes:
Chinese Rocket Stage Now a Cloud of Orbital Debris After Disintegrating in Space:
On November 12, China's Long March 6A rocket broke apart after launch, scattering debris in low Earth orbit. Now, reports suggest that the disintegrated upper stage of the rocket has grown to a cloud of 350 pieces of space debris.
The rocket launched at 5:52 p.m. ET on November 11 from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China, carrying the Yunhai 3 environmental monitoring satellite.
Shortly after delivering the satellite to low Earth orbit, the upper stage of the Long March 6A rocket broke apart, the South China Morning Post reported at the time. The U.S. Space Force's 18th Space Defense Squadron tracked 50 pieces of space debris resulting from the rocket's break up at an estimated altitude of 310 miles to 435 miles (500 to 700 kilometers), the squadron announced on November 13.
Nearly a month later, experts are still tracking the disintegrated pieces from the rocket. "There are now 350 debris objects cataloged from the Nov 12 disintegration of a Chinese rocket stage (CZ-6A Y2), in sun-sync orbit," Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, wrote on Twitter based on ongoing tracking by the Space Defense Squadron.
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