Beijing has asked the UN to remind the US to comply with an agreement governing the outer space after a space satellite launched by tech space company Elon Musk SpaceX nearly collided with its space station twice last year.
China said its air force used anti-collision tactics in July and October to avoid clashes with Starlink satellites in a recent report submitted by Beijing to the UN Committee on Space Peace Earlier this month.
“China wishes to request the Secretary-General of the United Nations to disseminate the above information to all members of the Outer Space Treaty,” read a report sent by its permanent mission to Vienna.
It added that state agencies must “take international responsibility” for the national functions performed by both government and non-governmental organizations in space.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told the Guardian that it was “very unusual” for a country to lodge a complaint with “information”.
SpaceX has launched more than 1,600 satellites into space in a network called Starlink and has received approval from the US Federal Communications Commission to launch up to 12,000 satellites into space.
Collisions are not uncommon in space, but incidents like these have increased in recent years due to the number and speed of satellites being introduced, according to McDowell. “Starlink is a big part of that,” he said.
He added that China also contributes significantly to atmospheric waste. “It is also fair to say that the US space station several times in the last 10 years has had to avoid fragments of the Chinese anti-satellite military of 2007. It is not as if the Chinese had a clean history here. The biggest landfill event ever was China’s anti-satellite testing. ”
The event is a reminder that the earth has entered a “new era in space”, says the astronomer.
“There is a lot of debris and there are active satellites. Things are getting busier and heavier there … The time is controlled by trade … when it emphasizes space for the first time. “
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
China’s space program completed five successful deployments by 2021.