Summary
A Chinese Long March 6A rocket launched the first 18 satellites for the Qianfan ("Thousand Sails") broadband network. The network will eventually host up to 14,000 spacecraft. The rocket successfully delivered the satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) But its upper stage broke apart shortly thereafter, generating a cloud of debris.
This isn't the first time a Long March 6A upper stage has spawned a debris cloud in orbit. One of the rocket bodies broke apart on Nov. 12, 2022, shortly after deploying the Yunhai-3 weather satellite.
