The trajectory of the spacecraft, which blasted off shortly after 3 p.m. local time from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center 1,200 miles away in Sichuan province in southwest China, "unexpectedly flew over and went exoatmospheric when the vehicle was above Taiwan's southern airspace," the Defense Ministry said in a post on X.
However, the Ministry of National Defense later issued an apology after the text alerts sent to millions of people's smartphones warned the object was a "missile."
"The air raid alert system was activated in the form of text messages to inform the public," the ministry said. "The default English message was not revised and therefore incorrectly stated the launch vehicle was [a] 'missile.' The MND extends an apology for any confusion this may have caused."
China had not provided any advance notice of the launch of its Einstein Probe, which will use X-ray detection technology to observe little-understood cosmic phenomena such as supernova explosions, gravitational wave events, dormant black holes and other faint transient objects in the distant universe.
Foreign minister Joseph Wu called the incursion into Taiwan airspace just four days before a general election scheduled for Sunday a "gray zone" activity in the same vein as military flights into Taiwan's air defense identification zone and a recent spate of incursions by Chinese weather balloons.
"All these kinds of tactics remind people here in Taiwan that there is a danger of war," he said. "With these kinds of threats against Taiwan, I think we should be clear-eyed, and not be provoked."
However, the opposition Kuomintang Party rebuked the government and defense ministry for deliberately stirring up fear.
KMT lawmaker Ling Tao pointed out that the lack of emergency alerts during previous satellite launches, or even when China conducted missile launches in live-fire military exercises in response to then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's controversial visit to Taiwan in August 2022.
The incident follows a New Year's Day speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping in which he said China would "surely" be reunited with Taiwan, which Beijing views as a renegade province, and called on people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to join hands in the common purpose of the "rejuvenation of the nation."
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen used her own New Year's address to stress the future of the island was for its people and democratic institutions to decide.
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