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Now I would really love to know who the other operator was.
by Coeur 8mo ago
Now I would really love to know who the other operator was.
- jacquesm 8mo agoAnd what the goal of that maneuver was.
- ge96 8mo agoCause problems and deny it
- phkahler 8mo agoIt seems like it deliberately came close to the Starlink sat, but the "why" is still a good question.
- bell-cot 8mo agoA test of SpaceX's awareness & response would be ample reason.
- notahacker 8mo agoIf so, SpaceX's longer term response being "here's our SSA data for everyone and here's how we source it" is a good one for all parties involved (even more so for SpaceX and govt customers they share it with if they have other capabilities...)
- bell-cot 8mo agoSpeculation: SpaceX has considerably better data than what they disclose, and offer free of charge. The USSF enjoys full access to that better data, for $[TOP_SECRET]/month.
- notahacker 8mo agoWell we already know Starshield (the military version) has specialist space domain awareness capabilities that aren't being shared, and it's entirely plausible that data from regular Starlink sensors/receivers (other than the disclosed star trackers) can be fused into something useful by SpaceX and/or the Space Force.
- rkagerer 8mo agoWeapons test springs to mind, or as a sibling comment suggested a test of Starlink response capabilities. How confident are we the intent was nefarious? Do you ever see accidental near-misses with this type of flight profile?
- butvacuum 8mo agoThe system exists- ergo, people in the know are concerned about accidental collisions.
- jacquesm 8mo agoAlternative: the system exists, so people in the know may well have done proper risk assessment and may have identified multiple reasons that could result in a collision. Some of those reasons are accidental, some are not.
- NitpickLawyer 8mo ago> In a statement posted on social media late Dec. 12, Michael Nicolls, vice president of Starlink engineering at SpaceX, said a satellite launched on a Kinetica-1 rocket from China two days earlier passed within 200 meters of a Starlink satellite. > CAS Space, the Chinese company that operates the Kinetica-1 rocket, said in a response that it was looking into the incident and that its missions “select their launch windows using the ground-based space awareness system to avoid collisions with known satellites/debris.” The company later said the close approach occurred nearly 48 hours after payload separation, long after its responsibilities for the launch had ended. > The satellite from the Chinese launch has yet to be identified and is listed only as “Object J” with the NORAD identification number 67001 in the Space-Track database. The launch included six satellites for Chinese companies and organizations, as well as science and educational satellites from Egypt, Nepal and the United Arab Emirates.
- ge96 8mo ago> 48 hours after payload separation, long after its responsibilities for the launch had ended This is funny, the way things are just discarded in space, not our problem anymore vs. deorbit
- panzagl 8mo agoI think this is more that the offending satellite was at that point the responsibility of the satellite operator, not the launch operator.
- IncreasePosts 8mo agoIf you get hit by a car 5 minutes after you get let off at a bus stop it isn't the bus drivers fault.
- thesmtsolver2 8mo agoNah, in this case the driver is the person who gets off and goes and bumps into another person.
- 8mo ago