China’s Military Satellite Yunhai 1-02 Was Damaged On 18 March 2021 By Space Debris.

CHINESE MILITARY SATELLITE DAMAGED BY SOVIET ROCKET IS THE ‘FIRST MAJOR ORBITAL COLLISION IN A DECADE’

China’s military satellite Yunhai 1-02 was mysteriously damaged on 18 March 2021, but scientists now know the cause of the issue was a piece of space debris. The US Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron (18SPCS) said that analysis was “ongoing” on the 21 associated pieces that were broken off the satellite, which originally launched in September 2019. It was speculated that part of the craft could have exploded, but it is now known it came from the Zenit-2 rocket The Zenit-2 rocket launched a Tselina-2 electronic spy satellite in September 1996 and, said astronomer Jonathan McDowell at the Centre for Astrophysics on Twitter, after noticing the Space-Track website updated a note to the object: “Collided with satellite”. The debris only has one set of orbital datum from 16 March 2021, which makes the “obvious candidate” to have hit the Yunhai 1-02 satellite. “A quick analysis of the TLEs show that Yunhai 1-02 (44547) and [the debris object] passed within 1 km of each other (so within the uncertainty of the TLEs) at 0741 UTC Mar 18, exactly when 18SPCS reports Yunhai broke up”, Dr McDowell tweeted, adding that this “looks to be the first major confirmed orbital collision in a decade.” Source