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Monday, the European Space Agency (ESA) tweeted that he had to perform a collision avoidance maneuver to avoid a crash with one of SpaceX's Starlink satellites.
SpaceX was aware of the possible collision, said Holger Krag, head of ESA's Space Debris Office. Forbes – but refused to do anything and would not say why.
According to Forbes US history reveals that one of SpaceX's Starlink satellites had a 1 in 1,000 chance of colliding with ESA's Aeolus Earth Observation Satellite.
The Pentagon has informed the two agencies of the possible collision and, although ESA's satellite has been occupying the area for nine months longer than the Starlink satellite, SpaceX has informed ESA by e-mail that it does not planned not to take steps to prevent the collision and did not offer any explanation as to why.
This prompted ESA to execute the avoidance maneuver, which it does regularly to avoid collisions with dead satellites or space debris – but rarely to avoid active satellites and never before to prevent a collision with a mega constellation of satellites. But the fracture raises the possibility that similar maneuvers will become more regular in the future.
Although SpaceX's Starlink mega-constellation currently has fewer than 60 satellites, it could eventually launch more than 12,000 satellites as part of its plan to broadcast broadband Internet around the world, which could dramatically increase the risk of collision.
"We are not sorry for what they say [they wouldn’t move], Said Krag Forbes. "What worries me is how many times will we have such events in the future? These are just two satellites. Now, they will add several thousand, they will also be arranged and will lead to different altitudes. And there is no rule or law on how to react, it's goodwill. "
To prepare for a future in which potential Starlink collisions are much more common, ESA is now exploring the use of artificial intelligence to automate its collision avoidance systems, tweeting that such a system "becomes necessary to protect our space infrastructure".
according to Engadget, with Starlink satellites already equipped with automated collision avoidance systems, SpaceX's decision to not do anything may have been part of the project to determine if these systems would work as expected by automatically adjusting the satellite path without intervention manual of SpaceX.
This could explain why SpaceX did not motivate its inaction at ESA. It's hard to imagine that the agency would have accepted SpaceX to threaten ESA's $ 560 million satellite to test its own artificial intelligence.
READ MORE: European satellite had to launch thrusters to avoid a collision with a SpaceX satellite[[[[Time]
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