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.
(Score: 2) by Revek on Wednesday December 14, @11:43PM (3 children)
Something happens to one of their platforms due to some other countries space trash. Then you will hear how irresponsible it is. They will of course like always ignore what they have done in the past. Just like children.
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(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday December 15, @02:14AM
+1 Insightful
Their tune is getting mighty tedious by now. Sadly the higher ground appears to have been deserted for some time now.
(Score: 2) by progo on Thursday December 15, @05:54AM (1 child)
Story says:
WHY did it break up? Was it a design flaw, or bad condition of the rocket … or did existing space junk collide with it?
I'm not assigning blame. But it's gonna be fun when Russia cuts the undersea cables in the Atlantic, and then Kessler Syndrome goes exponential and takes out what's left of the Internet.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Thursday December 15, @03:46PM
I've been kind of following this story
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3199694/chinas-rocket-break-sends-space-junk-flying-near-starlink-orbit [scmp.com]
My guess is the LOX tank purge valve stuck open or a wire vibrated loose or similar, enough lox boiled off until pressure built up, then "pow". Seems to fit the time frame, it deployed its payload sat before popping. I don't think the RP-1 would explode like that so they probably flew multiple orbits turning the purge valves on and off and the fuel one worked, oxy not.
"should have" burst disks and stuff, but I suppose the disks you don't have can't accidentally fail open early...
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday December 14, @11:45PM (1 child)
I was somewhat skeptical about space debris being a huge problem in the coming decade, but then immediately thought about China. China doesn't mind dropping rockets filled with toxic fuel on its' own people. Good luck with the rest of the world, let alone space. China will do what it wants, because no one wants World War 3. WW3 may as well be labeled PAW (Post Apocalyptic Wasteland).
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday December 15, @07:56AM
If people stop buying things from China, and stop selling raw materials (including energy and food) to China, either willingly, or by coercion, then China will implode.
Of course, being able to buy cheap bling is more important, and there are plenty of people who would want to make a profit breaking sanctions, so it won't happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15, @09:30AM
China dumps waste plastic the West sends it into the ocean.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday December 15, @03:38PM (1 child)
That's pretty low altitude.
The irony about little pieces is the surface area to volume ratio is excellent for little things causing faster re-entry.
Instead of one huge target being up there for 30 years, we'll get a rain of little pieces for about a year.
Technically all that stuff is above the ISS "right now" but it'll all be below it in ... hard to estimate. A month for the little bits and months for the denser larger easier to track bits?
Orbital lifetime is incredibly non-linear such that for LEO sats the best way to dispose of them using a garbage truck would be to turn them to literal dust and it would settle out in a couple hours in some cases? On the other hand something like a long steel i-beam will be up there quite awhile...
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Thursday December 15, @04:42PM
Source: NASA debris FAQ [nasa.gov]
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