Chinese Satellite Passed Just 200 Meters From Starlink Satellite
Credit: Pixabay
On Friday, Michael Nicolls, vice president of engineering at Starlink, reported on social media X about an incident involving satellites in orbit, blaming it on a lack of coordination on the part of the Chinese launch operator, CAS Space. A Chinese satellite came within a critical distance of 200 meters of a Starlink satellite.
“When satellite operators fail to exchange ephemerides for their satellites, dangerous encounters in space can occur. A few days ago, nine satellites were launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. As far as we know, there was no coordination or collision avoidance with satellites already in space, resulting in one of the launched satellites coming within 200 meters of STARLINK-6079 (56120) at an altitude of 560 km. Much of the risk associated with space operations stems from the lack of coordination between satellite operators—this needs to be addressed.”
200 meters is incredibly small in space, and even in Earth orbit. A safe distance is considered to be at least 1 km. Collisions in space are dangerous because such events leave thousands of fragments in orbit for a long time, flying at high speeds and posing a danger to other satellites and the ISS.
Following the incident, CAS Space reported that it was in contact with SpaceX. Interestingly, the company commented on the situation as if it was not its fault.
Today, each party coordinates launches with national military space orbital monitoring services, which determine collision risks. The CAS Space rocket launch was no exception—the company sought assistance from its specialized services and received comprehensive data on the safety of the selected orbits.
