The Chinese regime urged the United States to act responsibly in space on Dec. 28, after its space station was forced to take evasive action to avoid collision with satellites launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink program.
Earlier on the same day, the state-run Global Times criticized the Starlink program and claimed that the Pentagon tried to test the Chinese space station’s capability of detecting a potential collision.
“There’s a huge amount of debris in space. All space stations and satellites need to maneuver themselves to avoid collisions, which is not a big matter. The Chinese regime had its agenda by enlarging this tiny issue,” said Wang He, Epoch Times columnist, on Dec. 28.
Wang pointed out that the foreign ministry’s spokesperson talked about the complaint on Tuesday because of a question that was asked by a reporter from the regime’s mouthpiece China National Radio. “This is an arrangement by the Chinese regime’s propaganda system,” he said.
“The Chinese regime wants to claim supremacy in space. It wants to show the world that its space station is advanced and can detect a potential collision. It wants to give the impression to the world that China is strong in space and the United States didn’t behave correctly,” Wang said.
“Another agenda is that [the Chinese regime] wants to know the cooperation between Musk’s SpaceX and Pentagon. It wanted to know the details of the cooperation and how the cooperation progresses,” Wang added. “So far, neither SpaceX nor the Pentagon responded to China’s criticism. It means Beijing’s plan to know the business secret has failed.”
China’s Complaint
China’s permanent mission to the United Nations (Vienna) sent a note verbale to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Dec. 3 about two incidents between the Chinese space station and the Starlink program, according to The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA).
The Chinese space station orbits around 242 miles after being launched on April 29. SpaceX’s Starlink program planned to set up satellite-based internet services around the world by launching 12,000 satellites. So far, the program has 1,740 satellites in orbit.
The Chinese regime claimed that Starlink-1095 used to orbit at 344 miles, but lowered to 237 miles in May and June. The regime complained that the Starlink-1095 lowered more on July 1, which scared the Chinese space station. The station had to maneuver itself to avoid a potential collision. The regime clarified that the Starlink-1095 was out of orbit on Sept. 20 and had been dropped to the atmosphere. The previous lowering of its altitude was the process of its decommissioning.
On Oct. 21, Starlink-2035 lowered about 62 miles from its orbit at 344 miles, the regime claimed. To avoid a potential collision, the Chinese space station again maneuvered itself. The Global Times quoted Chinese space experts saying that Starlink-2035 might have adjusted its altitude to test its telecommunication performance. But the report also questioned whether the Pentagon might be behind the test.
The Ambition
The Chinese foreign ministry and state-run media reports mentioned only the two incidents. In fact, the Chinese regime has increased the risk for all parties in space by unnecessarily producing a large amount of debris in the past decades.
China’s Fengyun-1C, a weather satellite that was launched in May 1999, is a good example.
The satellite had only worked for two years. In 2002, the Chinese regime decommissioned the Fengyun-1C but left it in orbit at 536 miles. In 2007, China fired a ballistic missile targeting the defunct Fengyun-1C which created a large debris field with over 3,000 pieces. This debris is still orbiting in space and causes increased risk to spacefarers to this day.
On Nov. 10, the International Space Station had to take evasive action to avoid collision with a piece of debris from this field.
“Not only the space debris, the rockets that the Chinese regime has launched have also caused a lot of damage and trouble. A recent example includes the Long March 5 (CZ-5 or LM-5) launching the Chinese space station on April 29, but the rocket stage lost control in space and fell into the Indian Ocean on May 8. People around the world watched and worried about the fiery [uncontrolled] reentry,” Wang said.
“The Chinese regime has spent all the country’s resources to develop its space technology, and wanted to compete with the United States in space. The regime’s ambition is clearly exposed in front of the public: it wants to own supremacy in space,” Wang concluded.
Reuters contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times
