Home › Breakup events › Thorad-Agena D (1970 breakup)
FRAGMENTATION · 1970-04-08
The Agena D upper stage from the 1970 Nimbus 4 launch fragmented in a ~930 km polar orbit, an early example of a spent stage breaking up long after its mission. The debris remains spread through the heavily-used sun-synchronous band.
Last updated: · Catalog refreshed daily.
Isolate this debris field on the live globe →Opens Space Junk View, hides everything else, and frames the surviving tracked fragments of Thorad-Agena D (1970 breakup) as they orbit.
Breakup events like this are why low Earth orbit is now crowded with debris. Space Junk View tracks all 31,328 cataloged objects — including roughly 10,229 pieces of debris — and lets you isolate a single event's fragment cloud to see exactly where its wreckage went. See the full breakup-events hub and our space-debris statistics.
See everything in orbit — satellites, rocket bodies and debris →