Its space station has had to carry out up to two emergency maneuvers to avoid collisions, denounces the Asian giant
Gossip dictates that the surfer community is not very accommodating to those Sunday people who jump into the water, fearing that they will break into the path of the expert wave riders. Now, who says boards on the beach say… rockets in space, where apparently something similar happens. The novice, in this case, is Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, whose course has ranked China.
The Asian giant has raised a protest before the United Nations, after the SpaceX satellites, the program developed by Musk, came too close to its space station, forcing it to make an emergency move. “For security reasons, (…) implemented a preventive control to avoid a collision,” says an official document sent on December 10 to the Office for Outer Space Affairs -UNOOSA, for its acronym in English-.
This station, named ‘ Tiangong ‘, contains a manned mission, so this episode “posed a risk to the life and health of the astronauts,” the text denounces. This would have happened twice.
The first took place on July 1. The ‘Tiangong’ was on the circular path set since its launch, in April this year, at 390 kilometers high and 41.5 degrees of orbital inclination. Between May and June, the Starlink-1095 satellite descended from its original position, at a height of 555 kilometers, until it stabilized at 382. Faced with the risk of a crash, the Chinese space station ended up resorting to an evasion maneuver.
The second is on October 21. On this occasion, the Starlink-2305 “constantly maneuvered with an unknown strategy before which it was difficult to estimate orbital errors,” says the Chinese government statement. Again, the ‘Tiangong’ was forced to change its position. While the first satellite of the American company continued to fall until it ended up entering the atmosphere and burning, the second managed to recover its initial height.
Galactic jam
SpaceX, founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, has launched more than 1,900 satellites since 2019, a number it plans to raise to 42,000. This has opened the way for other organizations, such as Amazon, which have begun to develop plans to place their own devices in orbit; an effort that has aroused the concern of academics, governments, and international institutions in the face of growing space congestion and its consequences in terms of security.
In March of this year, SpaceX signed an agreement with NASA committing itself to keep its Starlinks at a minimum distance of 5 kilometers from the International Space Station and other ships of the North American agency. The tycoon also maintains a cordial relationship with the Chinese government, to whom he has repeatedly referred in glowing terms. In August 2019, Tesla completed construction of its Gigafactory 3 on land in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, the first foreign-owned car factory in the Asian giant.
The statement from the Chinese authorities concludes with a nudge to the United States. “Given the preceding facts, China wishes (…) to underline Article 4” of the Outer Space Treaty, he prays. Said point establishes that “the countries participating in the Treaty shall assume responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, whether those activities are carried out by governmental or non-governmental organizations.” As in surfing, it doesn’t matter who owns the rocket or the board: what matters is that it’s in the wrong place.
