U.S. military believed to have destroyed China’s Yunhai 1-02 satellite

The U.S. Air Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron (18SPCS) tweeted on March 23 that a Chinese satellite disintegrated in orbit for unknown reasons.

The 18SPCS details that the squadron has confirmed that the Yunhai 1-02 (Cloud Sea One 02) satellite has disintegrated at 7:41 p.m. on March 18, 2021. The disintegrated satellite has generated 21 pieces of debris.

Yunhai 1-02 satellite is numbered 44547 in the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) catalog, with the international number 2019-063A.

According to an earlier news release from China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, China successfully placed the Yunhai 1-02 satellite into a predetermined orbit at 8:54 p.m. on Sept. 25, 2019, using a Long March 2D launch vehicle at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

Yunhai 1-02 satellite was developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Group (CAST), mainly used for atmospheric and marine environmental elements detection, space environment detection, disaster prevention and mitigation, and scientific experiments.

From September 25, 2019 to the present, in less than two years long, Yunhai 1-02 satellite should not be scrapped by itself.

Chinese netizens generally believe that this means the United States launched a space war against China, because on March 10, the same 18SPCS disclosed that the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s NOAA-17, a scrapped satellite, exploded in space, producing 16 pieces of debris. While the NOAA-17 satellite orbits at 800 km*817 km, it was very close to the 780 km*785 km of Yunhai 1-02 satellite, and the former’s exploding debris could easily hit Yunhai 1-02 satellite.

Some Chinese netizens believe that in retaliation, China may also disintegrate a U.S. satellite in the near future.