By John Ikani
Elon Musk is facing a social media backlash after China complained that its space station was forced to avoid collisions with satellites launched by his Starlink Internet Services project.
Starlink is a satellite internet network operated by Mr Musk’s SpaceX.
The country’s space station had two “close encounters” with Starlink satellites, Beijing claimed.
China’s complaints, lodged with the UN’s space agency, have not yet been independently verified.
In the first incident, Starlink dropped from an orbiting altitude of around 555 km to 382 km from May 16 to June 24. According to a document posted on the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs website, the drop in altitude led to a “collision risk” between Starlink and the Tiangong space station on July 1. According to the UN notice, the Chinese space station conducted an “evasive maneuver” to “avoid a potential collision between the two spacecraft,” according to the UN notice.
The second incident, on October 21, also required that China’s space station perform an “evasive manoeuvre” to avoid colliding with Starlink.
“As the satellite was continuously manoeuvring, the manoeuvre strategy was unknown and orbital errors were hard to be assessed, there was thus a collision risk between the Starlink-2305 satellite and the China Space Station,” the Permanent Mission of China to the United Nations said.
The two episodes sparked online criticism in China, where a number of social media users called Musk’s satellites “space junk.”
The topic of Starlink has been viewed on Weibo nearly 900 million times. One Weibo microblog user questioned if Space X’s satellites were weapons.
China’s state-backed Global Times also reported an expert saying SpaceX may be “trying to test China’s capability and response awareness in space.”
China requested that the UN secretary-general remind states they bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, according to UN Outer Space Treaty. This includes activities carried out by both government and non-government bodies.
China began constructing the space station in April with the launch of Tianhe, the largest of its three modules. The station is expected to be completed by the end of 2022 after four crewed missions.
Musk has become a well-known figure in China, though Tesla’s electric-vehicle business has come under growing scrutiny from regulators, especially after a customer climbed on top of a Tesla car at the Shanghai auto show in April to protest against poor customer service.
