Chinese company responds to SpaceX VP who claimed that company's satellite risked colliding with Starlink; says: We do not have ...

Recently, a collision in space was narrowly averted when a newly deployed Chinese satellite came within a few hundred meters of one of the roughly 9,000 Starlink satellites currently operating in low Earth orbit.

SpaceX blamed the satellite operator for not sharing location data. Michael Nicolls, VP for Starlink engineering, tweeted about the incident and put it on the lack of coordination from the Chinese launch provider CAS Space. “When satellite operators do not share ephemeris for their satellites, dangerously close approaches can occur in space,” wrote Michael Nicolls, VP of Starlink Engineering. “A few days ago, 9 satellites were deployed from a launch from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwestern China.

As far as we know, no coordination or deconfliction with existing satellites operating in space was performed, resulting in a 200 meter close approach between one of the deployed satellites and STARLINK-6079 (56120) at 560 km altitude,” he wrote.CAS Space reported successfully launching nine satellites that day using its Kinetica-1/Lijian-1 rocket. The payload included six Chinese satellites, two other jointly-developed satellites for clients from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, along with a student-built satellite from Nepal.

It seems that one of the satellites veered relatively close to a Starlink sat that’s been in service for over two years. “Most of the risk of operating in space comes from the lack of coordination between satellite operators —this needs to change,” Nicolls added. Responding to the same, CAS Space told PCMag it’s in contact with Nicolls to learn more about the “alleged incident.” However, the company noted: “We value the responsible use and sharing of space as the utmost priority.

Situations like these are the reason why nations should work together in space, build their common understanding instead of segregating emerging nations.”The company said: "As a launch service provider, our responsibility ends once the satellites are deployed, meaning we do not have control over the satellites' maneuvers. Nonetheless, it is everyone's common interest to avoid collision, so CAS Space will provide help however we can."The company added: “Our first priority is to identify the exact timeline of the incident. Which of the nine satellites were involved? Did the incident happen during satellite deployment or during the orbit maneuver of one of the satellites? Once we have a clearer picture, we will be in a better position to provide assistance to Starlink.” In addition, the company asserted that “All CAS Space launches undergo a mandatory process to align our deployment sequence with ground-based space awareness systems to avoid any potential collision with known satellites/debris. Kinetica-1 Y11 launched at 04:03:45 UTC exactly to an SSO at 550 km with LTDN at 10:30. Satellite separation was nominal. No collision risks were reported for the deployment process.

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