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Space
Space
Science
Mike Wall

Chinese rocket breaks apart after megaconstellation launch, creating cloud of space junk

Photo showing several bright objects outlined by red boxes, standing out against a starry black sky.

The first launch for a coming Chinese internet megaconstellation turned out to be quite messy.

On Tuesday morning (Aug. 6), a Chinese Long March 6A rocket launched the first 18 satellites for the Qianfan ("Thousand Sails") broadband network, which will eventually host up to 14,000 spacecraft.

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