The first one is already well known; there was a Russian launch vehicle failure, which put an upper stage with some fuel still on board into orbit. Something caused it to detonate; I suppose it <i>could</i> have been done by the Chinese, but no suspicious launch from Chinese territory occured. (That is, it can't have been destroyed by impact with a kill vehicle, at least not on purpose.) THe second story is definitely not that sort of a thing either, because there was no impact at all. What the Chinese tested was an impactor, so the Russian satellite should've been obliterated if it was destroyed by the same technology.<br /><br />Whatever caused these two accidents was definitely not the same thing. That's not to say it *can't* have been caused by other ASAT technologies, just that they're definitely different. I don't think anybody currently has the technology to destroy a satellite without launching a kill vehicle at it, so I tend to think the first one was a true accident. The latter I suppose could be some exotic beam weapon, since the vehicle wasn't destroyed but simply rendered inoperable. Some kind of EMP thing, although I am rather skeptical that the technology exists to do that so surreptitiously. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em> -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>