Intelsat 708

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The Long March rocket carrying the Intelsat 708 satellite begins to deviate from its course immediately after launch in these images from the report of the Cox Commission, which investigated the disaster for the U.S. Congress.

Intelsat 708 was a Space Systems/Loral FS-1300 telecommunications satellite intended to be launched into a geostationary orbit and operated by Intelsat. It was destroyed during a launch failure on February 15, 1996, causing fatalities near the launch site at Xichang, People's Republic of China, and prompting political controversy in the United States.

The Intelsat 708 satellite was built by Space Systems/Loral and was to be launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center site in China aboard a Long March 3B rocket. This rocket failed at launch due to an engineering defect and caused an impact in a village near the launch site, which reportedly killed an unknown number of Chinese civilians and caused other damage. The nature and extent of the damage remain a subject of dispute; the Chinese government, through its official Xinhua news agency, reported that six people were killed, while other sources claimed that the number of fatalities was likely dramatically higher.

Because Intelsat 708 contained sophisticated communications and encryption technology, and because portions of the debris were never located by the satellite's developers and may have been recovered by the government of People's Republic of China, Intelsat and the Clinton administration suffered criticism in the United States for allowing a possible technology transfer to China. (See also export controls.) These concerns prompted an investigation by the U.S. Congress. In 2002, the United States Department of State charged Hughes Electronics and Boeing Satellite Systems with export control violations in connection with the failed launch of Intelsat 708 and the prior failed launch of the APSTAR II satellite.

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