According to the US "space" website reported on the 9th, NASA recently warned in a document submitted to the US Federal Communications Commission that the low-Earth orbit occupied by the "Starlink" satellite is becoming crowded, which will adversely affect the ground system that warns of space collisions. NASA said "the safety of the International Space Station and all other NASA assets could be affected" and was concerned about "the impact on NASA's science and manned space missions."
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk
According to the report, the Federal Communications Commission is the main regulator of the U.S. communications industry. In an effort to develop the Internet satellite constellation, SpaceX's initial application to the committee showed that the Starlink constellation would consist of 12,000 small satellites in low-Earth orbit. After SpaceX's high-density launch, there are currently about 2,000 satellites in orbit, and in 2021 alone, the company launched 989 Starlink satellites. In 2019, SpaceX submitted an application to launch another 30,000 second-generation Starlink satellites. Bloomberg revealed that this goal may be achieved as early as 2028.
In response to SpaceX's plan to launch 30,000 additional "Starlink" satellites, NASA warned that the risk of space collision events is expected to increase significantly and could have an impact on NASA's science and manned space missions. "NASA hopes that the deployment of the second generation of Starlink satellites will be carried out cautiously in a way that ensures space safety and the long-term sustainability of the space environment."
It is worth noting that SpaceX has previously said that the "Starlink" satellite has the ability to maneuver and change its orbit, so the "risk of colliding with a large spacecraft is zero." But NASA disputes this claim: "The Starlink system is made up of thousands of satellites, and there is no way to ensure that the propulsion system of all satellites, the ground warning system for space collisions, is completely reliable, or that manual operations (if any) are 100% accurate." NASA also said that even if the Starlink satellite has autonomous obstacle avoidance, in the increasingly crowded low-Earth orbit, if one satellite changes orbit to avoid collisions, it may cause a chain reaction of other satellites with autonomous collision avoidance capabilities, thereby increasing rather than reducing the risk of space collisions.
"Starlink" satellites
In addition, NASA has also proposed other potential risks for the Starlink satellite. The first is that the "Starlink" satellite will seriously interfere with space research missions. Because of their low orbital altitude and beneath most OF NASA's science satellites, the sunlight they reflect may interfere with the instruments carried by the science satellites. Similar effects have seriously interfered with astronomical observations on the ground, and the trajectory of a large number of "starlink" satellites through the night sky will destroy astronomical observations that require long exposures. NASA also said, for example, that the near-Earth object observations of the Planetary Defense Program have been greatly affected. If the number of Starlink satellites continues to increase, it is possible that the figure of the "Starlink" satellite will appear in every asteroid survey photo taken by ground-based telescopes, which will have a serious impact on the monitoring of asteroids that may hit the Earth. Secondly, the orbit of the Starlink satellite is also located under the International Space Station. Tightly "wrapping" these satellites around Earth will complicate the launch of spacecraft to the International Space Station that deliver supplies and astronauts. NASA is worried that as the number of "Starlink" satellites increases, each space launch needs to pre-coordinate the "Starlink" satellites to "give way", and it will become more and more difficult to find a safe launch time window, "especially those emergency launch missions".
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