China’s Long March 6A rocket broke up in low Earth orbit after achieving the significant milestone of launching 18 Qianfan satellites, creating more than 300 pieces of trackable debris, the US Space Command (USSPACECOM) said today.
These 18 satellites were part of the first batch intended to establish China’s own version of Elon Musk’s Starlink, called the Qianfan (“Thousand Cells”) broadband network.
The satellites were launched on Tuesday by a Long March 6A rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China’s Shanxi province.
These satellites are designed and manufactured by the Shanghai-based Academy of Innovation for Microsatellites of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The rocket successfully delivered the satellites to an altitude of about 800 kilometers, but its upper part broke apart soon after. USSpacecom said the breakup created a cloud of debris that could be tracked around Earth.
“USSPACECOM can confirm the breakup of a Long March 6A rocket launched on August 6, 2024, resulting in more than 300 pieces of trackable debris in low Earth orbit,” the organisation said in a statement posted on social media platform X.com on Friday.
“USSPACECOM did not observe any immediate threats and continues to conduct routine connectivity assessments to support the security and stability of the space domain,” it said.
China launched the Qianfan mega constellation project in 2023 to provide more comprehensive and higher-quality communication services for domestic users.
Developed by Shanghai-based company Spacecell, the Qianfan network will establish a network of more than 15,000 low Earth orbit (LEO) wide-screen multimedia satellites in the long term, with 108 satellites to be launched this year and 648 by the end of 2025.
The constellation aims to provide global network coverage by 2027, eventually involving 15,000 satellites by 2030 to provide integrated services such as direct mobile connections, the Global Times reports.
SpaceX’s Starlink, on the other hand, currently has more than 6,000 satellites in space and has over 3 million customers in 100 countries.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)