A SpaceX executive brought up the incident to encourage greater coordination between satellite operators. The Chinese launch provider, CAS Space, is trying to learn more details.
aceX executive says a satellite deployed from a Chinese rocket risked colliding with a Starlink satellite.
On Friday, company VP for Starlink engineering, Michael Nicolls, tweeted about the incident and blamed a 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,” he wrote, referring to the publication of predicted orbital positions for such satellites.
CAS Space reported successfully launching nine satellites on Wednesday 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.
But it looks like one of the satellites veered relatively close to a Starlink sat that’s been in service for over two years. “As far as we know, no coordination or deconfliction with existing satellites operating in space was performed, resulting in a 200 meter (656 feet) close approach between one of the deployed satellites and STARLINK-6079 (56120) at 560 km altitude,” Nicolls wrote.
“Most of the risk of operating in space comes from the lack of coordination between satellite operators —this needs to change,” he added.
