On October 24, China launched its Shijian-21 into orbit. The satellite, according to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., is “tasked with demonstrating technologies to alleviate and neutralize space debris.”
As Beijing sees it, American satellites constitute “debris.”
Shijian-21 has a robotic arm that can be used to move space junk—there are more than 100 million pieces of it floating around the earth—or capture, disable, destroy, or otherwise render unusable other nations’ satellites. That arm makes Shijian-21 a “satellite crusher.”
