Orbiting Politics: Crises in Outer Space‪.‬

Greg Goldfarb is a Staff Writer for the Harvard International Review. On July 24, 1996, a small piece of rocket debris crashed into a French military satellite, sending the satellite spinning end over end. The fragment of rocket that collided with the French satellite was a remnant of a 1986 explosion, caused by the ignition of leftover fuel. The French were eventually able to reestablish control over their satellite. However, the collision marked a dubious milestone: it represented the first high-speed collision of two known, tracked objects in outer space.