Being a lover of Space and SpaceX, this incident highlights why a goldilocks paradigm for regulation needs to exist for space. Not too much that it stifles innovation. Not too little that someone ends up Kesslerizing Near-Earth space.<p>Current regulations are largely successful at promoting commercial space flight, but there is a big transparency gap between civilian space flight agencies and private entities. Transparency should be one of the cornerstones of space regulations, but it isn’t. This incident raises multiple policy questions. Why can’t SpaceX move their satellite? Is it a no because an ion drive takes days to burn or is it a no because they don’t wanna? Either way, it exposes a flaw in SpaceX’s design and raises concerns about StarLink. When there are hundreds of StarLink satellites in the air, will SpaceX say no again if there’s a chance for collision? Will SpaceX be a responsible steward of Near-Earth space? If ion drives are insufficient to address this problem, should they be required to take a small amount of monopropellant as a precaution?<p>Transparency is essential for answering these questions and asking new ones. The one I’m most concerned about is the question, what are the pollution risks of LEO constellations? Ideally, before StarLink and other networks are up and running, I feel there should be a study of the pollution risk StarLink poses be it light pollution or debris. We shouldn’t repeat the failings of the 20th century in space.
>ESA noted that it performed 28 collision avoidance maneuvers in 2018, but it was mostly to avoid dead satellites or bits of space debris. Maneuvers to avoid active satellites were “very rare”, they said, but the arrival of mega constellations like Starlink raises concerns that many more such maneuvers will be needed in future.<p>>“What I want is an organized way of doing space traffic. It must be clear when you have such a situation who has to react. And of course automating the system. It cannot be when we have 10,000 satellites in space that there are operators writing the email what to do. This is not how I imagine modern spaceflight.”<p>SpaceX simply saying it would "not act" is negligent, and I <i>really</i> hope there was more to it that the author just wasn't privy to. If they had better sensors and knew there'd be no collision, say so. If they couldn't maneuver, say so. Otherwise it's just a game of space chicken, risking not only those two sats but all of LEO.
The ESA is sure making a huge deal out of this. I wonder if politics is involved.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/IridiumBoss/status/1168582141128650753" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/IridiumBoss/status/1168582141128650753</a><p>> Hmmm. We move our satellites on average once a week and don't put out a press release to say who we maneuvered around...
-Matt Desch, CEO of Iridium
NORAD 44278 is a Starlink satellite presently being de-orbited by SpaceX in a controlled fashion to simulate end-of-life disposal. [1]<p>The current altitude (~330km) [2] puts it well below the operation envelope and it’s currently the lowest sat of the Starlink constellation at this point.<p>It appears SpaceX does continue to have some level of control of the craft. [3] Some speculation I’ve read is that the much higher impulse of the ESA thrusters would make the ESA craft a better candidate to execute the maneuver.<p>These adjustments are not rare - they happen approximately every other week for this particular craft, and as Iridium says, they do this weekly. [4]<p>A video of the conjecture [5] shows an approach of “less than 10km”. The ESA craft apparently passed much closer to several other craft over the last week, so there may be more to it in this case, or there may be a bone to pick with Starlink.<p>Lastly, ESA has a particular interest in raising this issue now as much as possible, as these “mega-constellations” launched by US companies are coming closer to reality and the current processes (picking up the phone) don’t scale well to tens of thousands of satellites.<p>[1] - <a href="https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1144689334777524226?s=21" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/11446893347775242...</a><p>[2] - <a href="https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=44278" rel="nofollow">https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=44278</a><p>[3] - <a href="https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1168637324592328705?s=21" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1168637324592328705?s=...</a><p>[4] - <a href="https://twitter.com/iridiumboss/status/1168582141128650753?s=21" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/iridiumboss/status/1168582141128650753?s...</a><p>[5] - <a href="https://twitter.com/m_r_thomp/status/1168583891726344193?s=21" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/m_r_thomp/status/1168583891726344193?s=2...</a>
Of course, inside the article it’s explained that SpaceX didn’t “refuse” to move the satellite, they were politely asked to do so and declined for reasons the author is unaware of. Possibly because they couldn’t move the satellite or had a higher collision tolerance.
Everytime I see these kind of events I think about Kurzgesagt video [1] about how the domino effect of satellite collisions would release such a high amount space debris that would trap us all on earth forever.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU</a>
What's interesting is that there's already a similar internationally agreed framework for how to approach this - shipping - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_Preventing_Collisions_at_Sea" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_...</a> - These would probably be a good place to start considering a framework for satellite orbit adjustments. However, despite this framework, it still happens - and I can see the issue of risk evaluation being a big one - what if one entity thinks a 1/1000 risk is acceptable for their cheap satellite vs the other satellite wanting 1/1000000?
I wonder if AI is really the right tool to automate the process. Couldn’t it be done more robustly with a simple algorithm that takes todays collision probability models as input?
"SpaceX, in a new statement, says they were aware of the potential Aeolus/Starlink collision, but at first the probability was low. When the probability increased, “a bug in our on-call paging system prevented the Starlink operator from seeing the follow on correspondence.”" <a href="https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1168919094265044996" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1168919094265044996</a>
Why would they refuse to move the satellite? It's not like only the European satellite would be affected by a collision, both are in danger, so either they couldn't or they didn't think it was likely.
For anyone not familiar with aerospace terminology: LEO is not the name of the satellite but just means that it is a low flying satellite. It stands for Low Earth Orbit.
This is a false article. There is no evidence SpaceX refused to move and ESA calling out the fact that they moved for a SpaceX satellite is ESA playing politics. LEO is full of space debris and satellite owners move satellites for space junk all the time. This is called political grandstanding.
I was under the impression that most of the constellation would be at such an unusually low orbit that there wouldn't be much to collide with. How crowded are the planned orbit shells?
The long term solution would be to establish some form of property rights over particular orbits. Then, to use a particular orbit, one must pay the market rate for it.
I guess when you have your own launch capabilities you can treat your internet satellites as easily replaced.<p>Adding more junk up there only serves to create more launches as the inevitable collisions occur. It arguably makes good business sense for SpaceX to add as much as possible and be quite fast and loose with their management of it, at least as long as it's the wild west up there.
> ESA is preparing to automate this process using #AI<p>Sounds like something SpaceX and other constellation satellite companies should do as part of these widescale deployment. Or at least lower the threshold of moving out of the way so they don't get tons of push back from existing space power players who’ve got more influence than they do.
The US military tracking isn't very accurate. Errors of hundreds of meters are common.<p>I bet spacex themselves know the location of their satellites to within a few meters. With more accurate data, you can come up with a far more accurate collision risk estimate.
It's like when there's a crappy car refusing to give the right a way to a luxury car. The crappy car owner has little to lose compared to the luxury car owner.<p>Constellation owners (SpaceX here) knows that owners of big satellite will dodge them.
Big satellite will have to carry more fuel, which incidentally is good news for the business of satellite launchers (SpaceX again).
How is it the case that StarLink didn't realize they were launching into orbits that would intersect with others?<p>I find it foreboding that the number of intersections with space debris and live constellations is to the point where ESA is moving towards non-deterministic algorithms to hopefully avoid the worst. How will Musk ever leave this planet if we make a shell of debris around ourselves?<p>See also: the anime "planetes"
This is gonna get ugly pretty soon. I'm pretty convinced it's less an issue of moving (which esa itself stated it does once every week to two weeks) and more of politics. A couple possibilities:<p>* europe mad at America b/c trade<p>* europe mad at American companies beating european ones to space and getting more of the limited orbit spots first<p>* europe mad she wasn't really asked before SpaceX put up satellites<p>* europe has a principal objection to the idea of private companies playing on the same level as the bureaucrats or an issue with corps occupying space at all<p>Most likely, it's a combination of all of the above. Regardless, people will start getting awfully catty about this, and it's possible knocking some one else's satellite out of the sky could be a serious issue.
From the twitter thread:<p><pre><code> It is very rare to
perform collision
avoidance manoeuvres
with active
satellites. The vast
majority of ESA
avoidance manoeuvres
are the result of
dead satellites or
fragments from
previous collisions.
[ ... ]
As the number of
satellites in orbit
increases, due to
'mega constellations'
such as #Starlink
comprising hundreds
or even thousands of
satellites, today's
'manual' collision
avoidance process
will become
impossible...</code></pre>