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The
satellites from Starlink Internet Services, a division of Musk's
SpaceX aerospace company, had two "close encounters" with the
Chinese space station on July 1 and Oct. 21, according to a
document submitted by China earlier this month to the U.N.'s
space agency.
"For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented
preventive collision avoidance control," China said in a
document published on the website of the United Nations Office
for Outer Space Affairs.
The complaints have not been independently verified. SpaceX did
not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a post on China's Twitter-like Weibo microblogging platform
on Monday, one user said Starlink's satellites were "just a pile
of space junk", while another described them as "American space
warfare weapons".
With nearly 30,000 satellites and other debris believed to be
orbiting the planet, scientists have urged governments to share
data to reduce the risk of catastrophic space collisions.
SpaceX alone has deployed nearly 1,900 satellites to serve its
Starlink broadband network, and is planning more.
"The risks of Starlink are being gradually exposed, the whole
human race will pay for their business activities," a user
posting under the name Chen Haiying said on Weibo.
U.S. space agency NASA was forced to abruptly call off a
spacewalk at the end of November, citing risks posed by space
debris. Musk tweeted in response that some Starlink satellite
orbits had been adjusted to reduce the possibility of
collisions.
China began constructing the space station in April with the
launch of Tianhe, the largest of its three modules. The station
is expected to be completed by the end of 2022 after four crewed
missions.
Musk has become a well-known figure in China, though Tesla's
electric-vehicle business has come under growing scrutiny from
regulators, especially after a customer climbed on top of a
Tesla car at the Shanghai auto show in April to protest against
poor customer service.
(Reporting by Liangping Gao and David Stanway; Editing by
Bernadette Baum)
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