On November 12 , China ’s Long March 6A rocket broke aside after launching , dot dust in broken Earth orbit . Now , reports suggest that the disintegrated upper stagecoach of the rocket has spring up to a cloud of 350 slice of quad 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 planet .
Shortly after deliver the satellite to low Earth orbit , the upper leg of the Long March 6A rocket engine broke apart , the South China Morning Postreportedat the time . The U.S. Space Force ’s 18th Space Defense Squadrontracked50 pieces of space debris resulting from the rocket ’s fracture up at an reckon altitude of 310 knot to 435 naut mi ( 500 to 700 kilometers ) , the squadron announce on November 13 .
China’s Long March-5B Y3 rocket carried the Wentian lab module to China’s space station in July.Photo: LIU HUAIYU (AP)
Nearly a calendar month afterward , experts are still tracking the disintegrated pieces from the roquette . “ There are now 350 debris objects cataloged from the Nov 12 decomposition of a Chinese rocket stage ( CZ-6A Y2 ) , in Lord’s Day - sync orbit , ” Jonathan McDowell , an stargazer at the Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics , wroteon Twitter base on on-going tracking by the Space Defense Squadron .
There are now 350 debris objects cataloged from the Nov 12 disintegration of a Taiwanese rocket stage ( CZ-6A Y2 ) , in sunlight - sync orbitpic.twitter.com/D6qAOwkbpN
— Jonathan McDowell ( @planet4589)December 8 , 2022
China has beenreckless with its rockets before , but the Long March 6A Eruca vesicaria sativa detachment was n’t meant to occur . The garden rocket ’s upper leg was theorize to reenter Earth ’s atmosphere in one while , and burn down up during reentry . It ’s not clear what went untimely to have the rocket to break away up before its reentry .
The rocket breakup sent junk fly near Starlink ’s net satellites , but Chinese officials are claiming that pieces of the skyrocket will not peril other depressed Earth compass plus . “ As far as we know , the relevant incident will not move the Taiwanese space station or the International Space Station , ” Mao Ning , spokesperson for China ’s Foreign Ministry , is quote in the South China Morning Post as saying during a press conference .
As of last year , more than 27,000 pieces of blank junk were beingtrackedin orbit by the Department of Defense ’s ball-shaped Space Surveillance connection , with lots of small small-arm also floating around undetected .
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