According to rivals, Elon Musk’s satellite Internet project is too risky

Now, rival companies like Viasat Inc.,

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OneWeb Global Ltd., Hughes Network Systems and Boeing Co. they challenge the Starlink space race against U.S. and European regulators. Some complain that Mr Musk’s satellites are blocking signals from their own devices and have physically endangered their fleets.

Mr Musk’s effort is still in beta testing, but it has already disrupted the industry and even encouraged the European Union to develop an internet project based on rival space to be unveiled later this year.

The main argument of the critic is that the principle of launching and later updating of Mr. Musk was his Tesla Inc.

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The pioneering electric vehicle company prioritizes speed over quality, filling the Earth’s orbit already full of satellites that may be needed to solve them after launch.

“SpaceX has a space approach,” said Chris McLaughlin, head of government affairs for rival OneWeb. “Each of our satellites is like a Ford Focus, it does the same thing, it gets tested, it works, while Starlink satellites are like Teslas: they launch them and they have to upgrade and fix them, or even replace them completely. ”Mr. McLaughlin said.

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

About 5% of the first batch of Starlink satellites failed, SpaceX said in 2019. They gradually dropped to the ground and vaporized in the process. In November 2020, astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics calculated that Starlink’s failure rate was nearly 3%. McDowell said Starlink has greatly improved the design of its satellites since then and that the failure rate is currently below 1% and is on track to improve even further.

Even with constant improvement, McDowell said, Starlink will operate so many satellites that even a low failure rate would mean a relatively high threat to orbital safety due to the potential for collisions. “Clearly they’ve been making continuous improvements … but they’re doing a challenge and it’s not clear that they can manage the final constellation,” he said.

Starlink operates more than 1,300 spacecraft in lower Earth orbit and adds about 120 more each month. Its fleet is now on track to surpass the total number of satellites launched since the 1950s, around 9,000.

Orbital space is finite and the current lack of universal regulation means that companies can place satellites in order of arrival and classification. And Mr. Musk is on track to claim most free orbital real estate, mostly because, unlike competitors, he owns his own rockets.

In the next few days, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission will have to approve a SpaceX application to modify its license and allow more satellites to orbit at an altitude of about 550 kilometers (a kilometer is 0.625 miles). If approved, competing satellites would have to navigate the SpaceX fleet to place their own spacecraft.

Other companies operating in space have asked the FCC to impose conditions on SpaceX, including reducing the failure rate of its fleet to 1 in 1,000 and improving collision avoidance capabilities. while ensuring that they do not block the transmissions of other vessels orbiting above them.

“You should have fewer satellites and make them more capable,” said Mark Dankberg, founder and CEO of Viasat.

On Twitter, Mr Musk commented on Mr Dankberg’s previous warnings that his company posed a danger to orbital traffic by tweeting: “Starlink” poses a danger “for the benefits of Viasat, more or less”

A Boeing spokesman, who also poses a challenge to Starlink at the FCC, said it is “vital to the future of a safe and sustainable orbital environment that standards are globally consistent and allow for a competitive playing field.”

In the region of space where Starlink operates, satellites orbit the earth at 18,000 miles per hour. Any collision could spread high-speed debris that could make the orbit unusable for years.

Competitors say Starlink satellites have little maneuverability, which means that ships from other companies have to act when threats collide.

Starlink satellites have approached other spacecraft alarmingly twice in the past two years, including April 2, when a Starlink satellite caused another one operated by OneWeb, controlled by Indian conglomerate Bharti Global and the UK government, make evasive maneuvers, according to OneWeb and the US Space Command.

Mr. Musk’s satellites are equipped with an automated AI-driven collision avoidance system. However, that system had to be turned off when a Starlink satellite reached less than 200 meters from the rival satellite this month, according to Mr. McLaughlin of OneWeb.

When OneWeb contacted them, Starlink engineers said they could do nothing to prevent a collision and turned off the collision avoidance system so that OneWeb could maneuver around the Starlink satellite without interference. according to Mr. McLaughlin.

Starlink has not revealed details about its AI collision avoidance system. McDowell, an astrophysicist, said it was difficult to take this system seriously when it is not yet known what data it uses to operate.

A similar incident occurred in late 2019, when a Starlink satellite was in a near-collision course with an EU weather satellite, according to the European Space Agency, which manages satellites of the EU. EU. The agency said it could only contact Starlink by email and the company told it they would not take any action, so EU engineers had to initiate a collision avoidance maneuver.

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment on the two incidents

The lower Earth’s orbit is filled with broadband satellite constellations: Amazon.com Inc

The Kuiper project aims to remove 3,200 satellites, the British OneWeb around 700 and Canada’s Telesat around 300. Russia and China are working on their own, potentially massive constellations.

An EU official said owning a constellation that can broadcast broadband Internet to Earth is a strategic priority for the blog. It is expected to publish a roadmap for a public-private partnership to create a broadband satellite fleet worth about 6 billion euros, equivalent to $ 7,191 million, by the end of the year.

Space security experts say the number of projects means more regulation is needed to prevent potential catastrophes.

“It’s a race to the bottom in terms of getting as many things up there as possible to claim orbital real estate,” said Moriba Jah, an associate professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. “Musk is doing what is legal … but the legal is not necessarily safe or sustainable.”

Nevertheless, most governments welcome the emergence of satellite broadband as a cheaper and faster alternative to creating broadband networks. In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, leading telecommunications provider Deutsche Telekom recently showed its willingness to join Starlink.

“I’m a big fan of Elon Musk and his ideas,” Deutsche Telekom’s Timotheus Höttges said in January.

Write to Bojan Pancevski to [email protected]