Elon Musk under fire after China reports near-miss collisions from SpaceX Satellites

Asia-Pacific, News, US December 28, 2021 , by IRIA No Comments

Chinese Citizens are furious at Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk after a document revealed that China’s space station had to take emergency evasive actions in order to avoid a collision with the satellites launched under SpaceX Starlink Internet Services program.

According to a document submitted by China to the U.N.’s space agency, “close encounters” have been reported to occur on two different occasions in 2021, the first one on July 1 and another one on October 21.

The document does not indicate if the collision attempts were deliberate, however, the Chinese social media users have been describing SpaceX’s satellite as “American Space Warfare Weapons” that are being deployed to destroy China’s ambitious independent space station project.

China’s complaints are yet to be verified by the SpaceX and American Space Program, under which the company operates its cluster of 1900 satellites.

There are approximately 30,000 satellites and debris as well as one Tesla Roadster Car orbiting around our planet. China’s note to the UN’s space agency has urged international governments to share the database of all the satellites and space robots so pre-emptive measures can be carried out in order to avoid chances of collision.

The space station in question is China’s first independent space station. China began constructing it in April 2021 with the launch of Tianhe, currently home to three Chinese astronauts. Tianhe is the first and the largest of the three modules that would join together to complete the spaces station by the end of 2022.

This is not the first time that cautions of space collisions have been reported. Earlier this year in November the Russian military conducted an Anti-Satellite Weapons Test to destroy its own satellite that had been orbiting the earth since 1982. This created more than 1500 debris in the lower earth orbit causing a threat of collision to the International Space Station (ISS) and satellite.

ALSO READ: Russia conducts Anti-satellite Missile test

The U.S. space command responded by calling such action ‘reckless’ and ‘dangerous’. Elon Musk also responded to it by stating that the orbits of several Starlink Satellites had to be adjusted in order to avoid collision with the debris.