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Issue 29

02 Flash Archive · Members Only

Revisionist History: China Satellite Collides with Russian Space Debris

14 August 2021: Astronomer Jonathan McDowell spotted an update in the Space-Track.org catalog, which included "a note for object 48078, 1996-051Q: 'Collided with satellite.' The satellite in question is believed to be China's Yunhai 1-02 meteorological satellite. - In March, the U.S. Space Force's 18th Space Control S…

Author Greg Gillinger Published August 29, 2021

14 August 2021: Astronomer Jonathan McDowell spotted an update in the Space-Track.org catalog, which included “a note for object 48078, 1996-051Q: ‘Collided with satellite.’ The satellite in question is believed to be China’s Yunhai 1-02 meteorological satellite.

– In March, the U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron (18SPCS) reported the breakup of Yunhai 1-02, a Chinese military satellite that launched in September 2019. It was unclear at the time whether the spacecraft had suffered some sort of failure – an explosion in its propulsion system, perhaps – or if it had collided with something in orbit.

– Object 48078 is a small piece of space junk – likely a piece of debris between 4 to 20 inches wide (10 to 50 centimeters) – from the Zenit-2 rocket that launched Russia’s Tselina-2 spy satellite in September 1996.

– Yunhai 1-02 and Object 48078 passed within 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) of each other – within the margin of error of the tracking system – at 3:41 a.m. EDT (0741 GMT) on March 18, “exactly when 18SPCS reports Yunhai broke up,” McDowell wrote.

– The collision spawned 37 debris objects that have been detected to date…there are likely others that remain untracked.

– Yunhai 1-02 apparently survived the violent encounter…amateur radio trackers have continued to detect signals from the satellite, it is unclear if Yunhai 1-02 remains operational.

– Orbital debris is a growing problem. Small debris is tough to track, and there’s already a lot of it up there. About 900,000 objects between 0.4 inches and 4 inches wide (1 to 10 cm) are whizzing around our planet, the European Space Agency estimates. And Earth orbit hosts 128 million pieces of junk 0.04 inches to 0.4 inches (1 mm to 1 cm) in diameter, according to the European Space Agency.

“Collisions are proportional to the square of the number of things in orbit,” McDowell told Space.com. “That is to say, if you have 10 times as many satellites, you’re going to get 100 times as many collisions. So, as the traffic density goes up, collisions are going to go from being a minor constituent of the space junk problem to being the major constituent. That’s just math.”

Issue 29 - Revisionist History: China Satellite Collides with Russian Space Debris

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