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posted by janrinok on Wednesday September 04 2019, @07:31AM   Printer-friendly

About a week ago, the 18th Space Control Squadron, US Air Force, relayed warning data to the European Space Agency.

The data indicated that there was a non-negligible collision risk between ESA's Aeolus satellite and Starlink44, an active SpaceX satellite, at 11:02 UTC on Monday, 2 September.

As days passed, the probability of collision continued to increase, and by Wednesday, August 28, ESA's Ops team decided to reach out to Starlink to discuss their options. Within a day, the Starlink team informed ESA that they had no plan to take action at that point. By Thursday evening, ESA's probability threshold for conducting an avoidance manoeuvre had been reached, and preparations were made to lift Aeolus 350 meter in orbit. By Sunday evening, chances of a collision had risen to 1 in 1000, and commands were sent to the Aeolus satellite, which triggered a total of 3 thruster burns on Monday morning, half an orbit before the potential collision. About half an hour after the collision prediction time, Aeolus contacted base, and normal measurement operations could continue.

What the SpaceX satellite was doing in ESA's Aeolus orbit is not clear.

ESA has taken the opportunity to point out that, given SpaceX plans to put up 20,000 of those things, handling monitoring and avoidance semi-manually, and by mail, is no longer practical.


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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 04 2019, @01:22PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 04 2019, @01:22PM (#889511)

    ESA sounds like a spoiled child, this sort of manoeuvre happens all the time, what's the fuss?

    The gentleman's agreement appears to be for the two controllers to talk and decide what is the best plan and then do it.
    That fixes the problem of each thinking the other was going to move and also both moving into a new collision course.

    In this case, SpaceX did not participate in the discussion, except for an initial exchange before the collision seemed sufficiently possible.
    X says this was due to a bug in their automatic call the controller, notification system.
    Perhaps until they get a lot more automatic operational experience it would be wise to monitor the constellation with actual live folks present, 24-7?

    ESA could have been more clear why they called X on this, but a poor message delivery does not make the message wrong.

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday September 04 2019, @01:50PM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday September 04 2019, @01:50PM (#889517) Journal

    On one hand, ESA’s description of events is bizarre and dubious, at points. ESA Operations tweeted that “it is very rare to perform collision avoidance maneuvers with active satellites”, while the very next tweet stated that “ESA performed 28 collision avoidance maneuvers [in 2018]”, meaning that the procedure is roughly biweekly for ESA alone.

    Meanwhile, Matt Desch – CEO of Iridium, the owner and operator of one of the largest LEO constellations ever flown – stated that its Iridium NEXT satellites perform similar maneuvers weekly, without the need to “put out a press release to say who [Iridium] maneuvered around”. In simple terms, collision avoidance maneuvers are extremely common and extremely routine and are a fundamental part of operating satellites on orbit – be it one, ten, or ten thousand.

    ESA made it news. Maybe to throw shade at SpaceX or broadband constellations in general. There may be a hidden push to restrict these 1k+ satellite constellations, and astronomers are going to be the loudest opponents.

    --
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    • (Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday September 04 2019, @04:14PM

      by quietus (6328) on Wednesday September 04 2019, @04:14PM (#889580) Journal

      What?

      You don't see a problem with satellite A moving into orbit of another active satellite B, and the company behind satellite A going 'duh -- our guy had a problem with his pager, dude'?