Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is at the center of the latest diplomatic disagreement between China and the United States.
In early December, Beijing sent a complaint to the United Nations Committee for the Peaceful Use of Outer Space to complain that the Tiangong space station, the apple of the eye of the Chinese space program, had to perform “evasive maneuvers” to “avoid a possible collision” with Starlink satellites launched by SpaceX, one of Musk’s companies.
According to the Associated Press, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian argued this week that collisions nearly occurred on July 1 and October 21, putting the crew of three space station crews at risk, and demanded that Washington “take immediate steps to prevent such incidents from happening again.”
Starlink is Musk’s project to establish a constellation of satellites, with the aim of providing high-speed internet around the world. More than 1,900 satellites have been launched by SpaceX since the project began in 2019, and the number is expected to reach around 42,000 in orbit in the coming years.
In the context of Cold War 2.0, the Chinese grievance cannot be understood as just a concern for the security of its space station – it also concerns the military dispute with the United States.
“If Musk’s satellites occupy large portions of the orbits
[próximas à Terra e sincronizadas com o sol], there will be little opportunity for other nations to send their own satellites,” said Song Zhongping, a former instructor for the Chinese Armed Forces, in an interview with the South China Morning Post.
“Starlink satellites have the potential to serve US forces during times of war, and the power of having thousands of eyes in the sky can never be underestimated,” he added.
Musk’s project has not only been criticized by China. Recently, the executive director of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, accused the naturalized American-born South African businessman of being “laying the rules” for a new commercial space economy.
In response, Musk claimed to the Financial Times that the space is “huge” and that its satellites are too small. “It’s not a situation where we’re effectively blocking others in any way. We don’t stop anyone from doing anything, nor do we plan to do it,” he argued.
Regardless of commercial and military disputes, experts are demanding a regulation of the launching of satellites to prevent the accumulation of special garbage from threatening the security of telecommunications and space crews.
In November, Russia confirmed an anti-satellite missile test, which hit an inoperative Russian spacecraft that had been in orbit since 1982. In response, the United States accused Russia of endangering the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) and reported that the test generated hundreds of thousands of smaller orbital fragments that will pose a risk to space operations for years to come.
“The space may be big, but as the satellites are in very specific areas, (those areas) are getting crowded. Certainly, the recent Russian anti-satellite test has shown how overcrowded these regions can be,” said Marla Geha, professor of astronomy at the Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences, in an interview on the university’s website.
“Apart from the collection of space junk, I think the real way forward is regulation. We need to make some small adjustments now – like putting a rocket in each satellite to responsibly take it out of orbit – so that there isn’t a big problem in five or ten years,” he added.
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