The Way the Chinese Treat Their Megaconstellations

Remember how the Chinese launch rockets from well inland and just let the boosters fall where they may? Be it in lightly inhabited spaces or on elementary schools, well, who cares? Just let them fall. They apparently treat their megaconstellations the same way.

They've begun launching a megaconstellation that seems to be aimed at competing with SpaceX's Starlink (or replacing it in their country). The first launch was at 0642 UTC on August 6. Apparently the Long March 6A booster has blown apart in orbit, generating "more than 50 pieces" big enough to track from the ground. 

The Long March 6A launched Aug. 6, from a specifically constructed launch pad at Taiyuan spaceport. The rocket’s upper stage, modified for restarts and deploying numerous satellites, deployed 18 flat panel Qianfan (“Thousand Sails”), or G60, satellites into roughly 800-kilometer-altitude polar orbit for Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST). 

The satellites are the first of a planned megaconstellation of more than 14,000 low Earth orbit (LEO) communications satellites. However the mission appears to have created a string of debris along its orbital path, according to observations from Slingshot Aerospace, a space-tracking and data analytics firm.

“Composite images from Slingshot’s LEO-focused Horus optical fences show a series of bright, unexpected objects moving along the same orbital path as the rocket body and the G60 satellites it deployed,” Slingshot Aerospace noted in a statement.

Composite image from Slingshot’s LEO-focused Horus optical fences, showing debris from the Aug. 6 Long March 6A launch. Credit: Slingshot Aerospace

According to Slingshot, everything below an orbital altitude of 800km or 500 miles is now at increased risk of collision because of this debris. A LOT of what's in LEO is less than 500 miles up. 

The US Space Force issued a statement verifying the report.

U.S. Space Forces – Space (S4S) tracking confirmed the breakup of the Long March 6A rocket stage. “The breakup likely occurred Aug. 7, at 1548 UTC. The tracked pieces are being incorporated into routine conjunction assessment to support spaceflight safety. There are currently no threats to human spaceflight. Analysis is ongoing,” the statement read.

At around 500 miles altitude, debris can survive in space a long time; like decades.  Which underscores the deeper problem here. This is not the first launch that had a problem with the Long March 6A. 

The debris incident is the latest of several events affecting the upper stage of the Long March 6A. An early July saw numerous pieces of debris created, detected by Swiss firm S2a systems and reported by SpaceNews.
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A Long March 6A upper stage breakup event (pdf alert) in November 2022 meanwhile created hundreds of pieces of debris.

Like most things launched from the Peoples' Republic, it's a state-owned and state-produced design. The Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST) has yet to respond to a request for comment on the earlier incidents.

With multiple debris fields, the worst case scenario gets more probable and there are no indications they plan to stop launching these rockets, which very likely will add more debris fields. That scenario is the chain reaction kind of collisions depicted in the movie Gravity, where a couple of things moving at high relative velocities collide creating many pieces moving at the high orbital speeds of the junk, which then collide with other pieces of junk and then even more. The potential to shut off access to space suddenly needs to be thought about.

The state-owned Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST) plans to launch 90 more satellites this year; assuming the same 18 satellites per launch as this one carried, that's five more Long March 6A launches this year. That's just getting started. 

Documentation filed with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) sets out plans for a first phase using 36 polar orbital planes, each filled with 36 satellites, totaling 1,296 spacecraft. The overall plan is for more than 14,000 satellites. It is unknown what launchers the satellites will fly on. The potential frequent use of the Long March 6A, however, raises concerns.

“If even a fraction of the launches required to field this Chinese megaconstellation generate as much debris as this first launch, the result would be an untenable addition to the space debris population in LEO,” Audrey Schaffer, Vice President of Strategy and Policy, said in a statement to SpaceNews. 

And they're just getting started. 

[This constellation] G60 or Thousand Sails is just one of the megaconstellations planned by China in response to Starlink. Launches for the national Guowang (“national net”) 13,000-satellite project are also expected in the future.

There's an unexpected bright spot here. China is also pushing next generation launch vehicles including reusable medium and large launch vehicles. Added launch capacity from commercial reusable launch vehicles will be necessary for China to be able to build its planned megaconstellations. I expect reusable vehicles will be built better simply because there's pretty much no such thing as reuse of a rocket that comes apart.