Elon Musk’s satellite internet project is too risky, rivals say

Now, rival companies like Viasat Inc.,

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OneWeb Global Ltd., Hughes Network Systems and Boeing Co. challenges the Starlink space race to US and European regulators. Some complain that Mr Musk’s satellites are blocking the signals of 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 stimulated the European Union to develop a rival space-based internet project, which will be unveiled by the end of the year.

The main argument of the critics is that the launch principle of Mr. Musk – first, the update – later, which made Tesla Inc.

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the electric car company, a pioneer, prioritizes speed over quality, filling the Earth’s already crowded orbit with satellites that may need repair after launch.

“SpaceX has a gung-ho approach to space,” 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’s tested, it works – while Starlink satellites are like Teslas: they launch them and then they have to update and repair them, or even replace them. altogether, “said Mr. McLaughlin.

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

About 5 percent of the first batch of Starlink satellites failed, SpaceX said in 2019. They were allowed to gradually fall to the ground and vaporize in the process. In November 2020, astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics calculated that the Starlink failure rate was almost 3%. Mr McDowell said Starlink had significantly improved the design of their satellites since then and that the failure rate was currently below 1% and was on track to improve further.

Even with constant improvement, Mr. McDowell said, Starlink will operate so many satellites that even a low failure rate would pose a relatively high threat to orbital safety due to the potential for collisions. “Clearly, they have made continuous improvements … but it is a challenging thing they are doing and it is not clear that they will be able to manage the final constellation,” he said.

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

The orbital space is finite, and the current lack of universal regulation means that companies can place satellites on the first come, first served basis. And Mr. Musk is about to make a claim for most free orbital real estate, largely because, unlike competitors, he owns his own rockets.

In the coming days, the US Federal Communications Commission will approve an application by SpaceX to change its license and allow more satellites to orbit at an altitude of less than about 550 kilometers (one kilometer is 0.625 mile). If approved, competing satellites should navigate around the SpaceX fleet to deploy their own spacecraft.

Other companies operating in space have asked the FCC to impose SpaceX conditions, including reducing the failure rate of its fleet to 1 in 1,000 and improving collision avoidance capabilities, while ensuring that it does 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 chief executive of Viasat.

On Twitter, Mr Musk commented on Mr Dankberg’s previous warnings that his company was a danger to orbital traffic by tweeting: “Starlink ‘is a danger’ to Viasat’s profits, more than this.

A Boeing spokesman, who also challenges Starlink at the FCC, said it was “extremely important for the future of a safe and sustainable orbital environment that standards be 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 that Starlink satellites have low maneuverability, which means that other companies’ boats have to act when collisions threaten.

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

Mr Musk’s satellites are equipped with an AI-powered automatic collision avoidance system. However, this system had to be shut down when a Starlink satellite reached a distance of 200 meters from the rival satellite this month, according to Mr. McLaughlin of OneWeb.

When contacted by OneWeb, Starlink engineers said there was nothing they could do to avoid 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 did not disclose details about their AI collision avoidance system. Mr McDowell, the astrophysicist, said it was difficult to take such a system seriously when it remained unclear what data it used to operate.

A similar incident occurred at the end of 2019, when a Starlink satellite was on a near collision course with an EU weather satellite, according to the European Space Agency, which manages EU satellites. The agency said it could only contact Starlink by email and the company told it it 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 Earth’s lower orbit is crowded with broadband satellite constellations: Amazon.com Inc.

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

An EU official said owning a constellation that could broadcast broadband to the Earth was a strategic priority for the bloc. A roadmap for a public-private partnership is expected to be published for the creation of a satellite broadband fleet worth around € 6 billion, equivalent to $ 7.19 billion, by the end of the year.

Space security experts say the number of projects means more regulations are needed to avoid potential disasters.

“It’s a race to the bottom in 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 only does what is legal … but the legal is not necessarily safe or sustainable.”

However, most governments welcome the advent of satellite broadband as a cheaper and faster alternative to building broadband networks. In Germany, the largest economy in Europe, the main telecommunications provider Deutsche Telekom has recently expressed its desire to join Starlink.

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

Write to Bojan Pancevski at [email protected]