China claims that the satellites of the Starlink company, owned by Elon Musk, could have caused a space catastrophe.
As reported by CNBCIn a document released this month by the Chinese government to the UN space agency, Beijing reports that its space station had to maneuver to avoid colliding with two of the satellites of the Starlink constellation.
According to the document, the Tiangong space station had to carry out preventive checks twice to avoid collisions with SpaceX’s Starlink satellites. The events took place on July 1 and October 21. After knowing the news, the users of Weibo, the popular Chinese social network equivalent to Twitter or Facebook, have set the platform on fire with comments against Musk and his satellites.
China claims that the two incidents constituted potential “dangers to the life or health of the astronauts aboard the Chinese space station.” The source medium indicates that at the moment the incidents reported by China in its complaint to the UN have not been independently verified. For its part, SpaceX has not responded to CNBC’s request for comment.
It is not the first time that Starlink satellites have been involved in a similar problem. In September 2019, the Aeolus satellite of ESA (the European Space Agency) also had to perform a series of maneuvers to avoid a possible collision with one of these satellites of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation. According to ESA, despite being warned, SpaceX informed him that they were not going to do anything because the situation “was not dangerous.”
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