Space Sovereignty — incident
Anti-satellite demonstration
China kinetically destroyed its own Fengyun-1C weather satellite, creating a debris field that still threatens orbits in the most heavily used altitudes — and a political message every operator has had to reckon with since.
On 11 January 2007 China launches a kinetic-kill SC-19 missile from Xichang and destroys the defunct Fengyun-1C weather satellite at an altitude of 865 km. The intercept generates an estimated 3,000 trackable debris fragments and tens of thousands of smaller pieces — the largest single debris-creation event in the history of spaceflight.
The cloud will threaten operational orbits in the most heavily used altitudes for decades to come, and the test ends, in any practical sense, the conversation about whether kinetic ASAT is a credible national capability. Every space agency in the world plans on the assumption that more than one nation can press the button.