Two of the boosters that power the Long March 6A rocket.
The US Space Force confirmed on Saturday that a Chinese rocket stage broke up at least 500 kilometers over our heads on Nov. 12, creating some 50 new pieces of space junk around the same altitude as a number of SpaceX Starlink satellites and above where the International Space Station orbits.
The 18th Space Defense Squadron at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California made the announcement on Twitter.
The Long March 6A rocket launched Friday to send the Yunhai 3 Earth-observing research satellite to space.
“It appears the rocket body failed shortly after releasing the Yunhai-3 payload, as observations from 2 consecutive passes over the US in the hours after launch show fuel leaking from the rocket,” tweeted astronomer Cees Bassa, who spotted dozens of pieces of the second stage. “All pieces were tumbling fast, giving very distinct flash patterns.”
The rocket is much smaller than the Long March 5B booster that fell all the way back from orbit to the Pacific Ocean earlier this month, leading to brief airspace closures in Europe.
The pieces of the Long March 6A could eventually get pulled back down to Earth’s atmosphere, where they would likely burn up completely. But Bassa says that could take a few years. Along the way the debris would pass through the same orbital altitude as the International Space Station.
It’s not clear if the rocket stage collided with something in orbit that caused the break up, or if something went wrong with a fuel dump that led to a sudden and explosive disassembly.
It seems the Yunhai-3 satellite was successfully deployed and likely unaffected by the explosion, as the rocket stage was observed orbiting separately from the satellite, which has already been cataloged.
The Space Force says it will work to track and monitor all the known pieces of the former rocket.
