New Delhi: Billionaire businessman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was at the receiving end of Chinese citizens' ire Monday over his space ambitions. This happened after China complained that its Tiangong space station was forced to take evasive action to avoid collision with satellites launched by Starlink, the satellite internet constellation operated by SpaceX, news agency Reuters reported.
According to a document submitted by China earlier this month to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), the satellites from Starlink had two “close encounters” with the Tiangong space station on July 1 and October 1.
In the document published online on the website of the UN’s space agency, China said that the country’s space station implemented preventive collision avoidance control for safety reasons, the Reuters report said.
Chinise Citizens' Comments Against Musk's Starlink Satellites
One user posted on China’s Weibo microblogging platform that Starlink’s satellites were “just a pile of space junk”.
Another user described the satellites as “American space warfare weapons”.
A different user wrote that the risks of Starlink are being gradually exposed, and that the whole human race will pay for their business activities.
China's Comments On Starlink's Satellites
The document submitted by China said that the incidents "constituted dangers to the life or health of astronauts aboard the China Space Station", according to an AFP report.
Quoting Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian at a routine briefing on Tuesday, the AFP report said the US ignores its obligations under international treaties, posing a serious threat to the lives and safety of astronauts.
Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said that evasive manoeuvres to reduce the risk of collisions in space are becoming more frequent as more objects enter Earth's orbit, according to the AFP report.
"We've really noticed the increase in the number of close passes since Starlink started getting deployed," the AFP report quoted him as saying. He added that any collision would likely “completely demolish” the Chinese space station and kill everyone on board.
Any collision would likely "completely demolish" the Chinese space station and kill everyone on board, McDowell added.
Almost 30,000 satellites and other debris are believed to be orbiting Earth.
SpaceX has deployed nearly 1,900 satellites, which will serve the Starlink broadband network, and is planning more.
This is not the first instance of space debris posing risk to an orbital outpost. At the end of November, NASA was forced to abruptly call off a spacewalk due to risks posed by space debris.
In April, China launched the Tianhe module to begin construction of the Tiangong space station. Tianhe, meaning heavenly place, is the core module, and the largest of the station’s three modules. After four crewed missions, the station is expected to be completed by the end of 2022.