SpaceX/Unsplash
space
Technology
/ China
months of investigation
Study finds Russian rocket fragment hit Chinese satellite in March
By: Gabriela Ramos
On: 8/25/2021
SpaceX/Unsplash
The Chinese military satellite Yunhai 1-02 launched in 2019 broke down in March of this year, according to US Space Control. The reason for the break had not been discovered until then: it was considered that the propulsion system could have exploded or the satellite could have collided with some object in orbit.
However, the investigation carried out by astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Center, in the United States, revealed that, in fact, the Chinese satellite's disruption occurred due to a collision with a piece of a Russian rocket.
McDowell came to this conclusion from an alteration made to the Space-Track site's catalog last Sunday, where the object registered as “48078, 1996-051Q” had the phrase “collided with a satellite”. McDowell claims he had never seen this type of comment.
The “48078” is a piece of a Russian Zenit-2 rocket that in 1996 launched the Tselina-2, an electronic spying satellite, into space. eight pieces of this rocket
they had already been tracked between 1997 and 2001.
However, this piece is new and only records an orbit dated March 16th. It is assumed, therefore, that the absence of data was because the piece of the rocket was only identified after a collision, which McDowell indicates was against the Chinese satellite (recorded in the catalog as 44547).
According to the data, the piece of Russian rocket and the Yunhai passed just 1 km apart, which is the accuracy limit of our detection systems, at 4:41 am (Eastern time) on March 18: date and time that match the information of when the Chinese satellite broke.
Gabriela Ramos
Gabriela is the latest addition to the editorial team of our website, having provided us with her solid background in editing, publishing and photography, and her interest and training in aviation history and historiography. His good taste and common sense and great cleverness and sagacity in the selection of themes and materials greatly enriched our vocabulary and narrative style. Gabriela brought unusual predicates and came to stay, helping to point the way of success of our portal.
   
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