'Fast Movers': Meet the Chinese Satellites that Zoom Around for Inspections—or Interference

David Chen and New America's Peter W. Singer wrote on China's satellites that zoom around for Defense One.

Among China’s new fleet of satellites are several “fast movers”: satellites that roam the GEO belt, drifting back and forth among the “stationary” ones. Like ship tenders, they can help assess and repair malfunctioning satellites. For instance, debris mitigation may have been the primary mission for the Chinese satellite Shijian-21, which in 2021 grappled a derelict Beidou satellite and boosted its orbit up 3,000 km, into an unusually high and eccentric graveyard orbit before returning to the GEO belt. But these “tender” spacecraft could also be used maliciously against other nations’ satellites.

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