How did recent deliberate satellite intercepts affect the space debris environment?
On 11 January 2007, China conducted an anti-satellite test, intercepting their Feng Yun 1C satellite with a surface-launched medium-range missile. The collision occurred at an altitude of 862 km on a near-polar orbit, adding more than 2500 trackable objects to the US Space Surveillance Network catalogue, increasing its size by 25 percent. This was by far the worst break-up event in space history – some 3.5 time worse compared to the worst previous event. Due to the high altitude of the collision event and the low ambient air density, the fragment orbits will have a long lifetime. In the lists of high-risk fly-bys of catalogue objects with ESA’s Envisat and ERS-2 satellites, an average of 30 percent of such events are caused by Feng Yun fragments. On 21 February 2008, the United States intercepted their USA-193 satellite with a modified SM-3 missile. At the time of engagement the target spacecraft was at an altitude of 249 km, on a near-circular orbit at 58.5 degrees inclination. Due to
