China launch seen as anti-satellite muscle

The US government believes a Chinese missile launch this week was the first test of a new interceptor that could be used to destroy a satellite in orbit, a US defence official said yesterday.

China launched a rocket into space on Monday, but no objects were placed into orbit, the Pentagon said. It re-entered Earth’s atmosphere above the Indian Ocean.

“We tracked several objects during the flight but did not observe the insertion of any objects into orbit and no objects associated with this launch remain in space,” said Lieutenant Colonel Monica Matoush, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

The rocket reached 10,000 kilometres above Earth, the highest suborbital launch seen worldwide since 1976, according to Jonathan McDowell at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.

China has said the rocket, launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in western China, carried a science payload to study the earth’s magnetosphere.

“I want to emphasize that China has consistently advocated for the peaceful use of outer space and opposes the weaponisation of outer space as well as an arms race in outer space,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters in Beijing.

However, a US defence official said US intelligence showed that the rocket could be used in the future to carry an anti-satellite payload on a similar trajectory. Neither the US official nor the Pentagon released details of what the Chinese rocket carried into space.

“It was a ground-based missile that we believe would be their first test of an interceptor that would be designed to go after a satellite that’s actually on orbit,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the US House Intelligence Committee, declined to comment on the rocket launch, but said China was clearly taking a more aggressive posture in space.

“Any time you have a nation-state looking to have a more aggressive posture in space, it’s very concerning,” Rogers said at a Reuters Cybersecurity Summit.