SpaceX's Starlink satellite network requires unholy amount of small communication satellites, located in Earth's geostationary orbit. Company has applied permissions for a whopping 42'000 Starlink satellites to be deployed. Currently there are over 1'200 Starlink satellites in the orbit already.
Such massive number of satellites poses a potential disaster for other organizations operating in space. Thus, the agreement, dubbed as Joint Spaceflight Safety Agreement, was announced by both, Nasa and SpaceX.
Under the agreement, both parties agree that in case of an inevitable collision, it is SpaceX that will steer away, using the ion thrusters on each hStarlink satellite. Without such agreement in place, a situation could happen where both, Nasa and SpaceX try to avoid collision and direct their instruments to the same direction, causing the collision anyway.
Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 22 Mar 2021 7:32
