Transportation
China Says It’s Monitoring Fallout in Space from Rocket Breakup
- Explosion last week may be one of top debris-creation events
- Chinese spacecraft are major sources of hazardous orbital junk
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China has for the first time publicly acknowledged a rocket it hailed as a “milestone” in its space program had broken up in an explosion last week that was one of the biggest sources of space junk in decades.
A Long March 6A rocket launched 18 communications satellites on Aug. 6 but then broke up and created hundreds of pieces of trackable debris, according to US Space Command.