Fengyun-1C destruction (2007)
The Chinese anti-satellite test of January 11, 2007, which produced the largest debris cloud ever created by a single event in orbit.
Destroying a satellite by high-speed impact does not make it disappear: it breaks into thousands of fragments that keep its orbit and drift slowly away from it. At the altitude of the test, atmospheric drag is too weak to bring them down quickly, so a military decision taken on one day weighs on every operator in the same orbital shell for decades. It is the textbook case of political risk turned into lasting, shared physical risk. For the in-orbit insurer, it raises collision probability across a whole region of space, with no solvent party liable and no practical recourse, since the 1972 convention requires proof of the launching state's fault.
On January 11, 2007, a Chinese ground-launched missile destroyed the Fengyun-1C weather satellite at about 865 kilometers altitude; more than 3,000 fragments were cataloged, and a large share remains in orbit nearly twenty years later.
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