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

Now rival companies such as Viasat Inc.,

VSAT 2.89%

OneWeb Global Ltd., Hughes Network Systems and Boeing Co. challenge Starlink’s space race to regulators in the US and Europe. Some complain that Mr. Musk’s satellites are blocking signals from their own devices and physically endangering their fleet.

Mr. Musk’s pursuit is still in beta testing, but it has already disrupted the industry and even spurred the European Union to develop a rival space-based internet project to be unveiled by the end of the year.

The main argument of the critics is that Mr. Musk’s principle of launching first, upgrading later, making his Tesla Inc.

TSLA 0.13%

electric car company a pioneer, prioritizing speed over quality, filling Earth’s already busy orbit with satellites that may need to be repaired after they launch.

“SpaceX takes a gung-ho approach to space,” said Chris McLaughlin, chief of government affairs for rival OneWeb. “Each of our satellites is like a Ford Focus – it does the same thing, it gets tested, it works – while Starlink satellites are just like Teslas: they launch them and then they have to upgrade and fix them, or even replace them entirely.” Said Mr. McLaughlin.

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

About 5% of the first batch of Starlink satellites failed, SpaceX said in 2019. They continued to gradually fall back to Earth and evaporate in the process. In November 2020, astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics calculated that the Starlink failure rate was nearly 3%. Mr. McDowell said Starlink has vastly improved the design of their satellites since then and the failure rate is currently below 1% and on track to improve further.

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

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

Orbit space is finite and the current lack of universal regulation means that companies can deploy satellites on a first-come, first-served basis. And Mr. Musk is on track to file a claim for most of the free orbital real estate, largely because, unlike competitors, he owns his own missiles.

In the coming days, the Federal Communications Commission in the US will approve a request from SpaceX to change its license and have a greater number of satellites orbiting the Earth at a lower altitude of about 550 kilometers (one kilometer is 0.625 miles). ). If approved, competing satellites would have to navigate SpaceX’s fleet to deploy their own spacecraft.

Other companies operating in space have asked the FCC to impose conditions on SpaceX, including lowering the fleet failure rate to 1 in 1,000 and improving collision avoidance capabilities while ensuring that they do not block transmissions from other vessels orbiting above them.

“You should have fewer satellites and enable them better,” said Mark Dankberg, founder and executive chairman of Viasat.

On Twitter, Mr. Musk commented on Mr. Dankberg’s previous warnings that his company posed a threat to orbital traffic, tweeting, “Starlink ‘poses a threat’ to Viasat’s profits, more similarly.”

A spokesperson for Boeing, who also challenges Starlink at the FCC, said it is “critical to the future of a safe and sustainable orbital environment that standards are globally consistent and enable a competitive playing field.”

In the area of ​​space where Starlink is active, satellites orbit the Earth at 30,000 kilometers per hour. Any collision can disperse debris at high speed that can render the track unusable for years.

Competitors say Starlink satellites have low maneuverability, which means other companies’ vessels have to respond when collisions are imminent.

According to OneWeb, Starlink satellites have come alarmingly close to other spacecraft over the past two years, including on April 2, when one Starlink satellite launched another, operated by OneWeb, controlled by the Indian conglomerate Bharti Global and the UK government. to perform evasive maneuvers. and the US Space Command.

Mr. Musk are equipped with an AI-powered, automated collision avoidance system. Still, that system had to be turned off when a Starlink satellite came within 30 meters of the rival’s satellite this month, according to OneWeb’s Mr. McLaughlin.

When OneWeb got in touch, Starlink engineers said there was nothing they could do to avoid a collision and shut down the collision avoidance system so that OneWeb could maneuver around the Starlink satellite without interference, Mr. McLaughlin said.

Starlink has not disclosed details about their collision avoidance AI system. Mr. McDowell, the astrophysicist, said it was difficult to take such a system seriously if it remains unclear what data it uses to operate.

A similar incident occurred in late 2019, when a Starlink satellite was nearly on a collision course with an EU weather satellite, according to the European Space Agency, which operates EU satellites. The agency said it could only contact Starlink via email and the company told it they would not take any action, so EU engineers had to initiate a collision avoidance maneuver.

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment about the two incidents

The lower Earth orbit is filling up with broadband satellite constellations: Amazon.com Inc.’s

Project Kuiper aims to deploy 3,200 satellites, the British OneWeb about 700 and Telesat of Canada about 300. Russia and China are working on their own, potentially huge, constellations.

An EU official said owning a constellation capable of beaming broadband internet to Earth is a strategic priority for the bloc. By the end of the year, it is expected to publish a roadmap for a public-private partnership to create a broadband satellite fleet worth approximately € 6 billion, which equates to $ 7.19 billion.

Space security experts say the number of projects means more regulation is needed to prevent potential disasters.

“It’s a race to the bottom in terms of getting as much stuff up there as possible to claim orbital real estate,” said Moriba Jah, associate professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin. “Musk is just doing what’s legal … but legal isn’t necessarily safe or sustainable.”

Nevertheless, most governments welcome the advent of broadband via satellite as a cheaper and faster alternative to building broadband networks. In Germany, the largest economy in Europe, the leading telecom provider Deutsche Telekom recently indicated its willingness to join Starlink.

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

Write to Bojan Pancevski at [email protected]