THE NEW SPACE RACE: China’s Shijian-21 towed dead satellite to a high graveyard orbit. If you can do it to a dead one, you can do it to a live one. “You could look at China working to develop the capability to remove inactive satellites on orbit as a way in which it is being a responsible space actor and cleaning up debris that it caused. Or you could use the lens that a lot of the US-based China watchers use and say that this could indicate that China is developing an on-orbit offensive capability. . . . Deliberately blending all these activities together is not helpful, particularly if China itself wants to be doing similar debris removal and satellite servicing activities and have them not immediately judged as suspicious.”
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