Chinese nationals hit Musk online after near-space station near-accidents

BEIJING, December 27 (Reuters) – Chinese citizens crack down on billionaire Tesla (TSLA.O) founder Elon Musk’s space ambitions online on Monday after China complained that its space station was forced to take evasive measures to avoid a collision with satellites shot up by Musk’s Starlink program.

The satellites from Starlink Internet Services, a division of Musk’s SpaceX airline, had two “close meetings” with the Chinese space station on July 1 and October 21, according to a document China submitted to the United Nations space agency earlier this month.

“For security reasons, China space station implemented preventive control to avoid collisions,” China said in a document published on the website of the United Nations Office on Outer Space.

The complaints have not been independently verified. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a post on China’s Twitter-like Weibo microblogging platform on Monday, one user said that Starlink’s satellites were “just a pile of space junk”, while another described them as “American space war weapons”.

With nearly 30,000 satellites and other debris believed to be in orbit around the planet, scientists have urged governments to share data to reduce the risk of catastrophic space collisions.

SpaceX alone has deployed nearly 1,900 satellites to service its Starlink broadband network, and is planning more.

“The risk at Starlink is gradually being revealed, all of humanity will pay for their business activities,” said a user named Chen Haiying on Weibo.

The US space agency NASA was forced to abruptly suspend a spacewalk in late November, citing the risk of space debris. Musk tweeted in response that some Starlink satellite orbits had been adjusted to reduce the possibility of collisions.

China began building the space station in April with the launch of Tianhe, the largest of the three modules. The station is expected to be completed by the end of 2022 after four crew assignments.

Musk has become a well-known figure in China, although Tesla’s electric vehicle business has been investigated by regulators, especially after a customer climbed on top of a Tesla car at the Shanghai Motor Show in April to protest poor customer service. read more

Reporting by Liangping Gao and David Stanway; Editing by Bernadette Baum

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