Elon Musk is facing a social media backlash after China complained that its space station was forced to avoid collisions with his Starlink satellites.
The incidents occurred on 1 July and 21 October, according to a document submitted by China this month to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.
“For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented preventive collision avoidance control,” Beijing said, noting that its space station had two “close encounters” with Starlink satellites.
After the complaint was made public, Mr Musk and Starlink were heavily criticised on China’s Twitter-like Weibo microblogging platform.
One user described Starlink’s satellites as “just a pile of space junk”. The satellites are “American space warfare weapons” and “Musk is a new ‘weapon’ created by the US government and military”, others said.
