Reporter | Anjing
The Chinese space station has twice urgently avoided the "Starlink" satellite launched by SpaceX, making SpaceX founder Musk once again the focus of controversy. Earlier this month, European space chief Josef Aschbacher warned that Musk was becoming a rule-setter in space.
In an interview with British media about the recent spate of controversy, Musk denied crowding out competitors in space, insisting that the Starlink program did not hinder anyone.
SpaceX's Starlink program was first launched in 2015 with the goal of building a constellation of satellites in low-Earth orbit to provide ultra-high-speed internet to users around the world. The program's first prototype satellite successfully entered orbit in 2018, and in the past two years, the Starlink satellite constellation has expanded at a high speed.
So far, the Starlink program has launched about 1,800 satellites in low-Earth orbit, while Musk is aiming to launch 42,000. From the time humans launched their first satellites to September this year, the total number of satellites around the Earth is less than 8,000, plus the scrapped satellites.
In addition to the huge number of satellites squeezing the development space of other countries, the security threats and national defense strategic threats caused by the "Starlink" plan to other spacecraft have caused controversy. Musk's plan is officially supported by the United States.
StarLink program
The official website of the "StarLink" program
According to the introduction, the plan is to allow global customers to enjoy high-speed video calls, network video viewing, online games, etc. that cannot be provided by other satellite Internet through low-Earth orbit satellites, with a network delay of only 20 seconds.
The introduction pointed out that most satellite Internet services use geostationary satellites, which operate in orbit 35,000 kilometers away from the earth. The Starlink service uses low-Earth orbit satellites, which are only about 550 kilometers from Earth, so they can shorten latency and provide higher speed network connections.
Although Musk previously advertised that StarLink will allow more people without network coverage to use the internet, the plan is currently priced high. For example, to become a StarLink user in New York, you need to pay $499 for hardware equipment, $50 for shipping and installation, and then $99 per month for use.
Image source: Starlink official website
Monitoring by Speedtest, a network speed testing company, shows that in the third quarter of this year, the median download speed of American "StarLink" users was 87.25Mbps, and the median upload speed was only 13.54Mbps, close to the fixed width speed, with a delay of 44 seconds. In Belgium, StarLink users can reach a median download speed of 127.46Mbps, which is higher than the fixed width of 72.90Mbps. Earlier this year, SpaceX announced that the download speed of "StarLink" will reach 10Gbps in the future.
Behind the increase in speed and the expansion of users around the world is spaceX's "crazy" satellite launch program and the full support of the Federal Communications Commission.
In May 2019, SpaceX launched the first batch of 60 Starlink satellites. By June, SpaceX announced that it had successfully launched 1,800 Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit, more than the company expected 1,600. Last December, the Federal Communications Commission approved nearly $886 million for SpaceX's StarLink program to strengthen broadband network coverage in 35 U.S. states.
In April, the Federal Communications Commission voted to allow SpaceX to move 2,814 Starlink satellites from a previously approved orbit of about 1,300 kilometers from Earth to an orbit of 540 kilometers to 570 kilometers. Together with the satellites already in operation, the Starchain low-Earth orbit constellation will increase to about 4500.
Back in 2018, the FCC gave SpaceX the green light, allowing the company to launch up to nearly 12,000 Starlink satellites. Last year, SpaceX applied to the Federal Communications Commission to continue launching nearly 30,000 second-generation Starlink satellites. Once the application is approved, SpaceX will be able to launch 42,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit. The company's rival, Amazon, has lodged a protest with the Federal Communications Commission.
Space Science and Technology Center, University of Massachusetts, USA
According to the researchers, since the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite of mankind in 1957, as of September this year, the total number of satellites around the earth has been 7941, including scrapped satellites. SpaceX plans to launch about five times as many 42,000 Starlink satellites as the total number of earth-orbiting satellites launched by humans in 64 years.
In an interview with reporters in 2019, Musk estimated that the world's Internet connectivity can generate $1 trillion in revenue per year, and the "StarLink" program may be able to win 3% to 5% of it. This means that the StarLink program can bring in $50 billion in revenue per year. SpaceX is currently valued at $100 billion.
In addition to boosting SpaceX's profits, Musk has other ideas. When announcing the launch of the Starlink program in 2015, Musk said the money earned by the Starlink program could be used to build the first city on Mars.
Musk unveiled a timeline for colonizing Mars last year: he hopes SpaceX will send humans to Mars in 2024 and build a self-sufficient city on Mars by 2050. He expects it will cost $100 billion to $10 trillion to build a Martian city.
Controversy
In September 2019, the European Space Agency's Fengshen meteorological satellite was forced to urgently change orbit to avoid colliding with the Starchain-44 satellite before the Chinese space station twice urgently avoided collisions with the Starlink-44 satellite.
European space agency officials pointed out that at that time, the "Fengshen" meteorological satellite and "Starlink-44" were in orbit 320 kilometers from Earth. The Aeolian was operating in that orbit nine months earlier than starlink-44, and the original orbit of starlink-44 was supposed to be in an area of 440 km to 550 km, and the sudden descent was to test the satellite's de-orbiting function.
After the U.S. military warned that the two satellites might collide, SpaceX refused to change the orbit of Starlink-44. Eventually the European Space Agency was forced to change the orbit of the Aeolus.
Earlier this year, something similar happened on OneWeb's communications satellite in the UK. Hugh Lewis, head of the space research group at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, pointed out that statistics show that since the launch of the first "Starlink" satellites in May 2019, spacecraft proximity events have been increasing.
There are currently about 1,600 spacecraft proximity events per week linked to Starlink satellites, accounting for 50% of such events. There is also a case where two spacecraft are separated by only 1 km.
Ralph Dinsley, founder of Norss, a British space object tracking company, in an interview with the Financial Times, accused musk of having almost taken up the best orbital plane at the speed at which musk launched satellites, establishing "Musk sovereignty" in space.
European Space Director-General Ashbach
Musk owns half of the world's satellites that are still in operation, "in fact, he has become a rule-maker, he has become a rulemaker," he said. Ashbach warned that Musk's expansion is squeezing the development of other countries and companies in space.
Musk denied the accusations in an interview with the Financial Times this week. He called space large and satellites small, and that every orbital "shell" around the earth was larger than the earth's surface. So low-Earth orbit has enough space to accommodate tens of billions of satellites, and thousands of satellites are like thousands of cars on Earth, "that's nothing."
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the United States, disagrees with Musk. He noted that the spacecraft is moving at 17,000 miles per hour, requiring much more space than a car to have enough time to adjust its orbit to avoid a collision. At this speed, the three-second adjustment interval is only enough for about 1,000 satellites to operate within each orbiting "shell".
Musk's disdain, in addition to the US Federal Communications Commission for the "Starlink" program all the way to the green light, there is also the shadow of the US military behind it.
Currently, the American Aerospace Company of Bohr is working with SpaceX to study the military use of the Starlink satellite constellation. The research was funded by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's "Experiments in Using Commercial Space Internet Defense" program. Back in 2017, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket began launching spy satellites for the U.S. military.
Image credit: U.S. Department of Defense
Last June, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a new strategic document on space defense, with the goal of giving the United States an edge in space over the next 10 years. To ensure "space superiority," the document notes, the U.S. Department of Defense will ramp up its cooperation with allies and private companies.
Ashbach bluntly said that in the "Starlink" satellite launch program, the US authorities are not only concerned about economic development, but also to ensure dominance in some areas.
According to the United States Union of Concerned Scientists, as of September 1 this year, there were 4,550 Earth-orbiting satellites in operation. Of these, 2,788 are from the United States, which is the country that has launched the most satellites in the world.
Of the 2,788 U.S. satellites, commercial satellites have the largest number of 2,359; they are followed by military (229), government (167) and civilian (33).