Satellite Competition and Anti-Satellite Weapons

The demonstrated ability to destroy satellites in orbit has become a central marker of military space power. On January 11, 2007, China conducted a direct-ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) test, launching a missile from Xichang Satellite Launch Center that destroyed its own defunct Fengyun-1C weather satellite at an altitude of roughly 865 kilometers; the collision generated more than 3,000 trackable fragments of debris, the largest single debris-creating event in the history of spaceflight at the time, much of which remains in orbit decades later and continues to threaten other satellites and the International Space Station. The United States had itself conducted an earlier ASAT test in 1985, destroying the Solwind P78-1 satellite, and responded in kind operationally in February 2008 with Operation Burnt Frost, using a modified SM-3 missile fired from the cruiser USS Lake Erie to destroy the malfunctioning reconnaissance satellite USA-193 before its hydrazine fuel tank could survive reentry and threaten populated areas.