(CNN) – One of China’s Long March 6A rockets broke up in low Earth orbit, creating a cloud of debris made up of hundreds of pieces, according to multiple space debris tracking entities.
The rocket took off on Tuesday of the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center to put 18 G60 satellites into orbit, which represents the first deployment of the Thousand Velas constellation of the Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology group.
The mega satellite constellation will eventually include 1,296 satellites, and there are plans to expand capacity to about 14,000 to rival SpaceX’s Starlink satellites.
Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. The United States Space Command (USSPACECOM), a branch of the US Department of Defense, confirmed the rocket rupture on Thursday.
“USSPACECOM has observed no immediate threats and continues to conduct routine conjunction assessments to support the security and sustainability of the space domain,” according to a Command spokesperson.
US Space Command continues to track the debris and provide information to NASA.
“No immediate threat to the International Space Station has been observed as a result of this breakup,” said Rob Margetta, public affairs officer at NASA Headquarters.
The number of debris tracked changed hourly on Thursday, starting with more than 50 tracked by Slingshot Aerospace’s Global Sensor Network. Later, US Space Command said it was tracking more than 300 pieces.
Now, radar data from monitoring organization LeoLabs has confirmed that the event resulted in at least 700 pieces of debris and potentially more than 900.
The rocket is believed to have broken up 810 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, and the debris poses “a significant danger to (low-Earth orbit) constellations” below 800 kilometers altitude, according to Slingshot.
For reference, the International Space Station orbits about 408 kilometers above Earth.
Slingshot’s Horus sensor systems, which track satellites in low Earth orbit, “detected a series of bright, unexpected objects moving along the same orbital path as the rocket body and the G60 satellites it deployed.”
The true risks of the debris cloud won’t be known until experts have a chance to fully analyze it, which could take another day or so. And the reason for the rocket’s breakup remains unknown.
Since the Chinese satellites were put into orbit around the Earth’s poles, rather than an equatorial orbit, “they will have a real impact with other objects that are not in polar orbit,” such as two vehicles colliding at an intersection, he says John L. Crassidis, Moog Professor of Innovation, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University at Buffalo.
Everything in low-Earth orbit travels at 17,500 miles per hour, Crassidis said.
“In the worst case, any part of the debris field would collide with something moving around the equator,” he explains. “That’s the case with a T intersection. Imagine two cars going 17,000 miles per hour and colliding at a T intersection. Obviously, that’s bad. In general, any object in its path will still be a bad situation.”
Given the altitude at which the break occurred, the remains are likely to remain in place for several years, and some could remain for decades, but it is difficult to predict how long without knowing the shapes of the remains, Crassidis said.
It is the second time one of these rocket bodies has experienced a significant breakup in low Earth orbit, according to Victoria Heath, associate director of marketing and communications at LeoLabs.
Another Long March 6A rocket body exploded in a region of low-Earth orbit densely populated by satellites on November 12, 2022, and the resulting more than 500 debris fragments were distributed between 320 and 1,500 kilometers and increased the risk of collision with satellites, especially in the center of the debris cloud, according to LeoLabs.
The company carried out a analysis and concluded that the November 2022 event was triggered by a problem related to the spacecraft’s propulsion system, rather than fragmenting due to the rocket’s collision with another object.
According to LeoLabs, there are currently about 1,000 abandoned rocket bodies in low Earth orbit, and that figure continues to rise due to increased launches as more countries focus on their space ambitions.
“If even a fraction of the launches needed to launch this Chinese megaconstellation generate as much debris as this first launch, the result would be a notable addition to the space debris population in (low Earth orbit),” said Audrey Schaffer, vice president of Slingshot Aerospace strategy and policy, in a statement.
“Events like this highlight the importance of adhering to existing space debris mitigation guidelines to reduce the creation of new space debris and underscore the need for robust space domain awareness capabilities to rapidly detect, track and catalog newly launched space objects so that they can be examined for possible conjunctions.”
