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US intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites orbit at about 800 km (500 mi) high and move at 7.5 km/s (4.7 mi/s), so if conflict was to break out between the United States and China, a Chinese Intermediate-range ballistic missile would need to compensate for 1350 km (840 mi) of movement in the three minutes it takes to ...
The space program of the People's Republic of China is about the activities in outer space conducted and directed by the People's Republic of China.The roots of the Chinese space program trace back to the 1950s, when, with the help of the newly allied Soviet Union, China began development of its first ballistic missile and rocket programs in response to the perceived American (and, later ...
Anti-satellite weapons, which are primarily surface-to-space and air-to-space missiles, have been developed by the United States, the USSR/Russia, India and the People's Republic of China. Multiple test firings have been done as part of recent Chinese and U.S test programs that involved destroying an orbiting satellite.
On September 22, 1969, China's first underground nuclear test was successfully detonated in Lop Nur. [26] [27] On April 24, 1970, China's first satellite (Dong Fang Hong I) was successfully launched into space, making China the fifth nation to put a spacecraft into orbit using its own rocket. [28]
According to officials, the United States does not have countermeasures against anti-satellite weapons. [7] On 20 February, Bloomberg News reported that the United States had informed its allies that Russia may attempt to launch a nuclear anti-satellite weapon by the end of the year. [8] Russian president Vladimir Putin denied the claims. [9]
Kosmos 2251 was launched on a Russian Cosmos-3M carrier rocket on June 16, 1993. [2] This satellite had been deactivated prior to the collision, and remained in orbit as space debris. The other spacecraft, Iridium 33, was a 560-kilogram (1,200 lb) U.S.-built commercial satellite that was part of the Iridium constellation for satellite phones. [2]
In 2007, the Chinese military shot down an aging weather satellite, [33] followed by the US Navy shooting down a defunct spy satellite in February 2008. [34] On 18 November 2015, after two failed attempts, Russia successfully carried out a flight test of an anti-satellite missile known as Nudol .
On 11 January 2007, China conducted an anti-satellite missile test. A Chinese weather satellite—the FY-1C (COSPAR 1999-025A) polar orbit satellite of the Fengyun series, at an altitude of 865 kilometres (537 mi), with a mass of 750 kilograms (1,650 lb) [1] —was destroyed by a kinetic kill vehicle traveling with a speed of 8 km/s (18,000 mph) in the opposite direction [2] (see Head-on ...