Hundreds of satellites at risk from a Chinese missile

Space is no longer safe at all since it became very "crowded" with satellites, rockets and other more or less flying objects. A Chinese rocket stage that broke up in space last week created more than 700 pieces of debris, putting hundreds of satellites and other objects in a high-traffic region of Earth's orbit at risk of collision. China's state-owned Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST) launched 18 internet satellites into orbit this month as the inaugural batch of a communications network that will compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX's vast Starlink constellation.

The upper part of the rocket that carried these satellites into orbit appeared to explode shortly after deploying its payload, creating a large debris field that US space tracking firms estimate to be at least 700 pieces by present. US space tracking firm LeoLabs said the number of pieces of debris is likely to exceed 900, making the event one of the largest so far. The debris cloud, created at an altitude of about 800 kilometers, will persist for several years, several analysts said. It was not clear whether the rupture of the rocket's top stage was caused by a collision with another object or an on-board explosion of unused rocket fuel. More than 1,100 satellites and other objects in space are at risk of colliding with the Chinese debris, Audrey Schaffer, vice president for strategy at the space tracking firm Slingshot Aerospace, told Reuters. "What we're seeing now is that there are over 1,100 predicted conjunctions with miss distances of less than 5 km over the next three days," Schaffer said, adding that about a third of these objects at risk are active spacecraft, which likely they can be handled from the road. The rest of the objects, Schaffer said, are runaway chunks of existing space debris that have no way to fend off the new debris, raising fears among many analysts of cascading collisions. In 2022, a stage of the Long March 6A rocket disintegrated in space and created hundreds of pieces of debris, prompting criticism of China from Western countries and space sustainability advocates, who said Beijing should better control how dispose of spent missile bodies. "Honestly, it's disappointing that the rocket had the same problem again," Schaffer said.