Canopus (also Opération Canopus in French) was the code name for France's first two-stage thermonuclear test, conducted on August 24, 1968 at Fangataufa atoll. The test made France the fifth country to test a thermonuclear device after the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and China. The announcement by France in the late 1960s to test a hydrogen bomb provoked the People's Republic of China to conduct a full scale hydrogen bomb test of its own on June 17, 1967.[citation needed]