China on Friday (Nov. 11) sent the Yunhai 3 environmental monitoring satellite into orbit for the second launch of the country’s new Long March 6A rocket.
The Long March 6A took off from the hilly Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in northern China at 5:52 p.m. EST (2252 GMT; 6:52 a.m. Beijing time on November 12) on November 11, just hours before China launched its latest cargo order to the Tiangong space station.
The satellite has entered its intended orbit, the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight (SAST), the state-owned manufacturer of the launch vehicle, said. announced (opens in new tab) within an hour of launch.
Related: The latest news on China’s space program
Little is known about the Yunhai 3 satellite. SAST and Chinese state media said it was designed to conduct investigations of the atmosphere and marine environment, space environment, disaster prevention and reduction, and scientific experiments.
Yunhai 3 is now orbiting about 520 miles (840 kilometers) overhead Earth in a sun-synchronous orbit, or SSO, which means it will pass the poles and specific points on Earth at the same time each day.
One part of the mission that didn’t go according to plan, however, is the performance of the rocket’s upper stage after it launched Yunhai 3 into orbit. The spent rocket stage suffered a breakup event and now consists of more than 50 pieces at different heights, adding to the overall threat space debris in low earth orbit.
The US Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron announced the disbandment of the Long March 6A upper stage Twitter (opens in new tab) on Sunday (Nov. 13). The squadron said it tracked and “included” more than 50 related parts at an estimated altitude of 310 miles to 435 miles (500 to 700 km). [this information] into routine conjunction evaluation in support of space security.”
A number of observations were also made from the ground, illustrating the breakup and fragmentation of the rocket stage. Certain pieces tumble and spin rapidly, creating lightning patterns as they catch sunlight.
Tonight I observed 43 (!!) pieces of debris from the CZ-6A rocket, which broke up in space after launch 2 days ago. All of the pieces tumbled rapidly, giving very clear flash patterns. @18thSDS will have a challenge tracking and determining orbits for all of these. pic.twitter.com/HJCcwsyn1iNovember 13, 2022
The debris is circling at an altitude where few molecules remain from Earth’s atmosphere. This means it will take many years for the fragments to be knocked out of orbit by atmospheric drag.
The latest figures from the European Space Agency’s Space Debris Office in Darmstadt, Germany say there have been such cases more than 630 (opens in new tab) Collapses, explosions, collisions or anomalous events in orbit resulting in spacecraft fragmentation or space debris.
It’s not the first in-orbit fragmentation to be linked to a Yunhai satellite. The Yunhai 1 (02) satellite broke into numerous pieces according to a suspect collision with a chunk of a Russian missile in March 2021.
Yunhai 3, on the other hand, is intact in its own orbit.
The Long March 6A bears little resemblance to the much smaller Long March 6 rocket, although the latter is also manufactured by SAST and launches from Taiyuan. The 6A is 50 meters (164 feet) tall and has a first stage diameter of 3.35 m (11 feet). (The 6A, in turn, is smaller than China’s mighty Long March 5B rocket, whose 25-ton core stages fall uncontrollably from orbit to Earth after launch.)
The Long March 6A is China’s first rocket combining a liquid-fueled core stage with four solid-propellant side engines and had its own first flight in March of this year. In particular, NASA’s now-decommissioned Space Shuttle used its own solid-liquid configuration.
The launch of Yunhai 3 was China’s 50th of 2022, with the Tianzhou mission marking launch number 51 5 hours later. The country is on track to break its national record of 55 launches in a calendar year, set in 2021.
Upcoming missions include a fourth mission for a commercial launch vehicle Galactic Energya maiden flight of the Jielong 3 (Intelligent Dragon 3) rocket – developed by a spin-off of China’s main space company, which will be launched from a mobile offshore platform – and the Shenzhou 15 manned mission to the Tiangong space station.
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