China Says SpaceX Satellites Nearly Collided With Its Space Station

Chinese citizens lashed out online against billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Monday after China complained that its space station was forced to take evasive action to avoid collision with satellites launched by Musk's Starlink program. CNBC reports: The satellites from Starlink Internet Services, a division of Musk's SpaceX aerospace company, had two 'close encounters' with the Chinese space station on July 1 and Oct. 21, according to a document submitted by China earlier this month to the U.N.'s space agency. 'For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented preventive collision avoidance control,' China said in a document published on the website of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. The complaints have not been independently verified.

In a post on China's Twitter-like Weibo microblogging platform on Monday, one user said Starlink's satellites were 'just a pile of space junk,' while another described them as 'American space warfare weapons.' SpaceX alone has deployed nearly 1,900 satellites to serve its Starlink broadband network, and is planning more. 'The risks of Starlink are being gradually exposed, the whole human race will pay for their business activities,' a user posting under the name Chen Haiying said on Weibo.

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