I could see them going after a european company, or America going after an American company. I'm guessing the europeans are going to insist they want it done in their courts, and SpaceX is just gonna shrug and say, "Nope, not showing up." europeans can't really make an American company do much.
> europeans can't really make an American company do much
There's very few large American companies for whom the EU is neither a huge market, nor a major location.
>ESA noted that it performed 28 collision avoidance maneuvers in 2018, but it was mostly to avoid dead satellites or bits of space debris. Maneuvers to avoid active satellites were “very rare”, they said, but the arrival of mega constellations like Starlink raises concerns that many more such maneuvers will be needed in future. >“What I want is an organized way of doing space traffic. It must be clear when you have s…
One is a throwaway satellite of a huge constellation - the other a unique billion euro research satellite. Easy to see who will give in first to protect their assets, but plainly it is equally easy to see who should move first.
This is not how right-of-way rules are designed for traffic in other environments.
... typically of dead satellites or debris that is unable to move itself. ESA had a weather satellite in orbit, SpaceX actively moved an active satellite _into_ the same orbit as ESA's satellite (to practice maneuvers) and then said "no, we won't move it back out the way".
No. All deorbiting objects (“satellites” or debris, whatever you want to call them) are going to pass through the orbit of the ESA satellite which is intentionally in a very low orbit. It is the ESA that actively moved into that orbit by design, intention and active navigation. SpaceX intended their satellite to lift to a higher orbit but it couldn’t make it, so it is being deorbited by atmospheric drag. All orbits a…
" SpaceX intended their satellite to lift to a higher orbit but it couldn’t make it, so it is being deorbited by atmospheric drag."
I don't understand this. If the satellite is being de-orbited, why bother pissing off the ESA to save fuel?
The long term solution would be to establish some form of property rights over particular orbits. Then, to use a particular orbit, one must pay the market rate for it.
Deorbiting satellites make that a hilarious proposal.
Certainly property rights to orbits will have special characteristics. We've already accumulated much experience with property rights for things that are different from physical property - I'm sure spending more than 30 seconds thinking about it can come up with solutions.
Have they stated anywhere they lost control of their satellite, that it was inert? It was under power and reportedly performing a test maneuver. If they didn’t have control over it they could have easily stated as such to ESA and avoided any bad PR at all, or even just in response to this story.
You will note that the official ESA comments on the matter are that “nobody did anything wrong,” and (to paraphrase) “we need better technology to remove humans, email and phone calls from the loop”. For all you know, SpaceX did state to the ESA that their satellite was incapable of performing the required course adjustment. Something along the lines of “our satellite is incapable of adjusting its orbit to accomodate…
> As for the author publishing the story before receiving a response from SpaceX, that’s on the author not SpaceX.
It’s on SpaceX, journalists can’t let companies kill their stories through silence. The story quotes Holger Krag as saying SpaceX replied “they do not plan to take action”. Quite different than “incapable”.
Everytime I see these kind of events I think about Kurzgesagt video [1] about how the domino effect of satellite collisions would release such a high amount space debris that would trap us all on earth forever. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU
Has this ever been explored as a Fermi solution? I realize it’s probably on the wild side of speculation but...
It just means orbits at one level are out of the question. You can still punch through to a higher orbit.
What happens if the two groups disagree on the odds of impact? Because one has either more precise or just different telemetry than the other?
There's not much to disagree on the odds. Trajectories are known, uncertainties too and therefore probabilities of collisions can be calculated. Any disagreement here is easy to reconcile, whose assumptions and methods are more accurate? The disagreement is on the importance of the odds. SpaceX might be OK with a 1:10000 (or whatever) chance of collision, the Europeans want it lower. The Europeans could in the future…
Considering the cost of launching on Ariane compared to Falcon 9, especially with rideshare upcoming, I don't think EU could ban companies from flying with SpaceX without hurting their own commercial satellite market to an extent.
You will note that the official ESA comments on the matter are that “nobody did anything wrong,” and (to paraphrase) “we need better technology to remove humans, email and phone calls from the loop”. For all you know, SpaceX did state to the ESA that their satellite was incapable of performing the required course adjustment. Something along the lines of “our satellite is incapable of adjusting its orbit to accomodate…
> As for the author publishing the story before receiving a response from SpaceX, that’s on the author not SpaceX. It’s on SpaceX, journalists can’t let companies kill their stories through silence. The story quotes Holger Krag as saying SpaceX replied “they do not plan to take action”. Quite different than “incapable”.
They published the story 4 hours after the incident happened. That's nowhere near enough time for SpaceX to respond, as such, it is indeed on the journalist in my opinion. Not only is it unlikely that the author found out immediately as it happened, it's unlikely that SpaceX could get a statement ready in 2 maybe 3 hours (assuming an hour total between author seeing this info and a SpaceX rep seeing his email about it), while also leaving the author time to write the article.
NORAD 44278 is a Starlink satellite presently being de-orbited by SpaceX in a controlled fashion to simulate end-of-life disposal. [1] The current altitude (~330km) [2] puts it well below the operation envelope and it’s currently the lowest sat of the Starlink constellation at this point. It appears SpaceX does continue to have some level of control of the craft. [3] Some speculation I’ve read is that the much higher…
If the Starlink satellite is moving (I don't mean actively moving, just that it's changed its orbit in the last few days), the measurements of its orbit are going to be less precise. So even if expected closest distance is greater, the error bars are wider. Which would give a larger probability of a conjunction.