China reports 2 space near-misses
It tells U.S. to rein in growing danger of SpaceX satellites
A pair of dangerously close space encounters are adding to tensions between the U.S. and China, while underscoring the potential peril to astronauts as satellite constellations and debris proliferate in orbit.
Two SpaceX satellites had near misses with China’s Tiangong space station earlier this year — one of them within 2.5 miles — in the latest sign of dangerous overcrowding in low earth orbit.
In both instances, the orbiting lab made evasive maneuvers to avoid the Starlink satellites operated by Elon Musk’s space venture. The margin for a near-miss in October could have been as little as a few hundred meters if the astronauts on board the space station hadn’t shifted to a different altitude, according to data compiled by astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell.
Musk is also chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., which has received unprecedented policy concessions and extensive government assistance in building a factory in Shanghai. SpaceX didn’t respond to inquiries about the Starlink incidents.
A foreign ministry spokesman accused Washington on Tuesday of ignoring its treaty obligations to protect the safety of the station’s threemember crew following the incidents in July and October. The United States should “take immediate measures to prevent such incidents from happening again,” said the spokesman, Zhao Lijian.
Beijing’s complaint was widely reported in state media, fanning public outrage against Musk and his companies. On Tuesday, China’s national broadcaster China Central Television posted a video online blasting SpaceX, with the hashtag “The United States is bringing its double standards into outer space.” The video and other posts tagged with the hashtag have received more than 30 million views.
“The U.S. government also bears responsibility,” the anchor says in the clip. “They have caused severe threat to
the lives and safety of other countries’ astronauts.”
A number of Chinese social media commentators on Wednesday raised the idea of sanctions or boycotts against SpaceX and Tesla. “We cannot let Musk eat China’s food while smashing China’s cooking pot,” one Weibo user declared. “I definitely won’t buy Tesla,” another wrote.
The U.S. State Department declined to comment on the SpaceX incidents specifically. “We have encouraged all countries with space programs to be responsible actors, to avoid acts that may put in danger astronauts, cosmonauts, others who may be orbiting the Earth,” Ned Price, a department spokesman, said at a briefing Tuesday.
MEMO TO U.N.
The close encounters prompted the Chinese government to criticize SpaceX in a Dec. 6 memo to a United Nations committee that oversees operations in space. China’s complaint could prompt global action on managing congestion in space.
China’s memo cites Starlink-1095, which had operated at an average altitude of 344 miles earlier this year, before descending to 237 kilometers and having a “close encounter” with the China Space Station on July 1. An incident with a separate Starlink satellite occurred Oct. 21.
“Originally, when I saw this Chinese U.N. document, I went, ‘That’s a bit rich of the Chinese, given the space debris they’ve generated,’” said McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, which is operated by Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution. “But I think it’s a good sign.”
By flagging the issue to the U.N. panel, China could spur the international community to update a treaty rooted in the Cold War, as well as an informal system that relies on operators to email warnings of potential collisions to one another, McDowell said. He counts more than 4,800 commercial satellites in operation, about double the total from five years ago, along with a debris field of about 19,000 objects large enough to be tracked on radar.
COLLISION HAZARDS
The International Space Station, in which the U.S. is a partner, has faced close calls of its own, ducking debris fields created from anti-satellite weapons tests by Russia in November and China in 2007.
Until recently, most satellites beamed signals from fixed locations far above the stretch of space where the International Space Station and China Space Station operate. But that’s changing as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the formal name of Musk’s company, OneWeb and other new entrants launch smaller satellites to offer services like internet broadband from low earth orbit.
Such activity is led by SpaceX, which plans to launch about 2,000 of its own satellites as it builds a telecommunications arm to help fund other company forays into deep space and bring internet access to underserved areas. Unlike geostationary satellites, Starlink’s can be maneuvered and come equipped with anticollision technology.
In its 34th and latest launch, SpaceX sent 52 satellites into orbit aboard a rocket Dec. 18.
The allegations that the satellites threatened the safety of China’s space station come as Beijing has been putting pressure on prominent business figures, even those who were previously national darlings. The approach also reflects the new Cold Waresque space race that is shaping up between China and the United States. Both are vying to put the first human on Mars and staking out strategic positions in space.
The space rivalry between the U.S. and China has been heating up in recent years. A top Chinese scientist this month said his country may be able to send astronauts to the moon for the first time by 2030, setting up the possibility of dueling missions between two of the world’s best-financed space powers.