The US government has dismissed a Chinese complaint about Starlink satellites, saying two evasive maneuvers by China’s space station were not necessary. With the so-called verbal note to the United Nations, the United States is reacting to a letter to the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which caused a stir at the turn of the year. In it, Beijing blamed satellites from the Internet project of the US company SpaceX for the fact that its own space station had to carry out evasive maneuvers twice in 2021 to rule out a possible collision. In both cases, however, the US Space Command did not determine a “significant probability” for this, it is now said.
No “significant probability” of a collision
Because the two potential approaches did not meet the necessary criteria, no emergency warning was issued, the US government is now explaining. If a “significant probability” of a collision had been determined, a proximity warning would have been sent to the responsible Chinese contacts, it said. At the same time, there is no known contact or attempted contact from China to the responsible Space Command or any US authority in relation to the two incidents. It was only through the letter to the United Nations that the concerns became known. It is thus suggested, with diplomatic reticence, that concern in China was not as great as the note verbale seemed to indicate. It had already been suspected that China wanted to distract from criticism of its own space program.
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China had urged the United Nations to remind all Outer Space Treaty states of their obligations, mainly their responsibility for any space activities from their own country. The criticism of SpaceX and the growing danger of collisions in space was not the first of its kind. In August, experts from the University of Southampton warned that the rapidly increasing number of Starlink satellites in orbit was already responsible for around 50 percent of near collisions (“close encounter”) are involved. The US government is now not responding to this. She thinks better information sharing can reduce the risk of collisions. To this end, all space nations should designate contact points or keep information on them up to date. They should also “work constructively” to reduce the risks.
(mho)