A Chinese rocket breaks apart dangerously close to the Starlink constellation - Ars Technica

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The upper stage from a commercial Chinese rocket that launched last week has broken apart in space, spreading debris in a heavily trafficked part of low-Earth orbit home to the International Space Station and a significant portion of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network.

The breakup occurred shortly after the Zhuque-2E rocket reached orbit on June 9 with two satellites providing direct-to-cell communications, perhaps around the time the upper stage was expected to perform a disposal burn. The US Space Force confirmed the breakup event in a post on space-track.org, a website used by the military to distribute orbit data to the public.

“The tracked pieces are being incorporated into routine conjunction assessment to support spaceflight safety,” the Space Force wrote in an advisory. “There are currently no threats to human spaceflight. Analysis is ongoing.”

Counting the pieces

So far, the Space Force has not added any of the debris fragments to the official catalog of human-made space objects. Darren McKnight, a senior technical fellow at the orbital intelligence company LeoLabs, told Ars the fragmentation event likely generated 100 to 150 pieces of debris.

In one piece, the second stage of the Zhuque-2E rocket, made by a Chinese company called LandSpace, measured between 25 and 30 feet (about 8 meters) long and 11 feet (3.35 meters) in diameter. The main body of the rocket’s upper stage is now orbiting between 208 miles and 263 miles (335-by-424 kilometers) at an inclination of 54.5 degrees to the equator.

The uppermost part of this orbit crosses the orbit of the International Space Station, but aerodynamic drag will quickly pull all the debris fragments below the ISS. The debris could pose a greater threat to hundreds of Starlink satellites, particularly those providing direct-to-device connectivity and newly launched satellites, which fly at lower altitudes than the bulk of the Starlink constellation.

The good news is that this altitude is low enough for aerodynamic drag to cause most of the Zhuque-2E debris to reenter the atmosphere within a matter of months. Most of the material will burn up during reentry. The worst-case scenario is a debris-generating event over 400 miles (650 kilometers), where it will take decades or longer for an object to naturally fall back into the atmosphere.

The bad news is that the Zhuque-2E’s breakup is the latest chapter in China’s growing contribution to the space junk problem. After decades of leaving spent rocket bodies in orbit, launch operators in most countries now reserve enough fuel to steer their upper stages back to Earth for controlled reentries. Rocket bodies attributed to Russia and the former Soviet Union account for the bulk of the launch-related debris in long-lived orbits, followed by China and the United States.

But the Russian and American numbers are declining or holding steady, while the mass of Chinese rocket bodies in these long-lived orbits has grown by more than 150 percent in the past five years, according to a new analysis by Space Domain Awareness expert Jim Shell. The increase comes as China ramps up launches of its own megaconstellations designed to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink. Ars reported on these numbers last month.

Rocket bodies are the most concerning sources of space debris because they are typically fairly large in size and mass, often with residual propellant and high-pressure gases that can trigger an explosion. There is no way to maneuver or dispose of them if left abandoned in orbit after releasing their payloads.

McKnight characterized the recent breakup of the Zhuque-2E rocket as a “slight space safety issue,” but the trend is not good. China’s Long March 6A rocket has an especially bad track record, including two explosions that littered a higher-altitude low-Earth orbit with more than 1,000 debris fragments, where they will remain for decades or centuries.

“Three of the top four breakup events in LEO are of Chinese origin, with two of these events being from Chinese (rocket body) explosions in the last four years,” McKnight said.

Stephen Clark

Space Reporter

Stephen Clark

Space Reporter

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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