FENGYUN 1C DEB

On 11 January 2007, China destroyed its own defunct Fengyun-1C weather satellite with a ground-launched anti-satellite missile at about 865 km altitude. The impact created more than 3,000 catalogued fragments — the single largest debris-generating event in the history of spaceflight. Because the collision happened so high, a large fraction of the debris will remain in orbit for decades to centuries.