On November 12, China's Long March 6A rocket disintegrated after launch, scattering debris in low Earth orbit. According to reports, the rocket's disintegrated upper stage has grown to a cloud of 350 pieces of space debris.
The Yunhai 3 environmental monitoring satellite was launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in northern China at 5:52 p.m. ET on November 11.
The upper stage of the Long March 6A rocket broke apart shortly after delivering the satellite to low Earth orbit, according to the South China Morning Post at the time. The 18th Space Defense Squadron of the United States Space Force tracked 50 pieces of space debris caused by the rocket's breakup at an estimated altitude of 310 miles to 435 miles (500 to 700 kilometers), the squadron announced on November 13.
Experts are still tracking the rocket's disintegrated pieces nearly a month later. "There are now 350 debris objects catalogued from the disintegration of a Chinese rocket stage (CZ-6A Y2) on November 12 in sun-sync orbit," Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, wrote on Twitter, citing ongoing tracking by the Space Defense Squadron.
China has been reckless with its rockets before, but the Long March 6A rocket breakup wasn’t meant to happen. The rocket’s upper stage was supposed to reenter Earth’s atmosphere in one piece, and burn up during reentry. It’s not clear what went wrong to cause the rocket to break up before its reentry.
The rocket breakup sent debris flying near Starlink’s internet satellites, but Chinese officials are claiming that pieces of the rocket will not threaten other low Earth orbit assets. “As far as we know, the relevant incident will not affect the Chinese space station or the International Space Station,” Mao Ning, spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, is quoted in the South China Morning Post as saying during a press conference.
As of last year, more than 27,000 pieces of space debris were being tracked in orbit by the Department of Defense's global Space Surveillance Network, with lots of smaller pieces also floating around undetected.