Chapter 1259 The Infamous Starlink

The engineer wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and said slowly: "The coordinates are confirmed, yes, they are confirmed. The formula for predicting the orbit has also been drafted, but I am afraid that we do not have a satellite at a suitable distance to implement this plan."

"Huh?"

This answer made SpaceX's controller Mask narrow his eyes slightly, "Will our satellites be at a distance that is not enough?"

The engineers looked at each other, and finally an old engineer who joined SpaceX when it was founded explained: "We encountered a geomagnetic storm before, and as many as 40 of the 46 Starlink satellites launched to this orbit and area were damaged, so we have not yet been able to extract available satellites for operations.

However, according to the operating orbit of Jiuzhou Technology's aircraft, After waiting for an hour, our three communication satellites will be able to change their orbits and collide head-on with it. "

"Geomagnetic explosion? The geomagnetic explosion five years ago caused us to lose 49 satellites. Together with the previous geomagnetic explosion, we have lost a total of 89 satellites! ? "

Alon Mask asked back with a somewhat exaggerated expression of shock, but the old engineer on the scene did not change much in his expression, and still explained steadily: "Yes, the geomagnetic explosion problem, the foundation problem of the launch site, and the maintenance plan of the communication satellite, etc. have caused us to lose hundreds of satellites.

If we do not expand the team and increase the maintenance service mechanism, more satellites will not work properly in the future. "

Expand the team and increase maintenance services?

Hearing these two plans, Mars Immigration Pioneer·Tram Patent Free User·Mask shook his head.

"The current team size of SpaceX is already the top team in Bluestar, and the number of satellites sent into space by Jiuzhou Technology is less than half of ours.

I think you should develop a more efficient and concise system program to help these satellites increase their service life. Xia Wei can compress 30% of the code, so can't you?

Or are you unwilling to work overtime for the project?"

If it weren't for the salary and benefits of the organization behind SpaceX and others, some engineers on site would have wanted to leave long ago.

For safety reasons, the Chinese space station implemented preventive collision avoidance control for Starlink satellites.

At this moment, Li Jian, chief engineer of Jiuzhou Technology's aerospace project at the command center of Jiuzhou Technology's Southwest Launch Center, keenly noticed a problem.

Why is the satellite density in this orbital area more than what we planned and predicted?

He made a zoom gesture with his right hand, broadcasting the orbit that the spacecraft carrying Ergou was about to pass in real time, and enlarged some satellite patterns that could be photographed.

Then, Li Jian took a deep breath and sighed: "At the beginning, SpaceX's Starlink satellites maneuvered to the orbital height of our Daxia Space Station several times. In order to avoid unnecessary collisions, the Tiangong Space Station had to make two emergency orbit adjustments.

SpaceX has launched nearly 5,000 satellites, which is simply 5,000 large space junk. It is too shameless."

Zhan Kunhu, the head of the satellite R&D and manufacturing department under the aerospace department of Jiuzhou Technology, heard the chief engineer sighing like this, and there was a surge of anger in his heart.

"It's more than shameless, it's simply selling swords! SpaceX plans to launch 42,000 satellites!

At first, this project was resisted by many international experts and scholars, but Mask lobbied all parties and even came up with a solution. He said that Starlink satellites will have built-in "autonomous avoidance systems" and use the NORAD database to guide satellites to automatically avoid all spacecraft.

But what is the result?

According to incomplete statistics from our department and some international institutions, more than half of the close contact incidents between satellites that have occurred since the 1019th year of the Xia Yin calendar were caused by Starlink satellites.

In addition to our Great Xia space station, many spacecraft of other Guo Jiahe institutions have also been threatened by Starlink satellites.

For example, the European Space Agency's wind monitoring satellite Aeolus almost collided with SpaceX's Starlink satellite. If the space agency's staff had not discovered the danger in time and urgently changed the satellite's orbit to avoid the collision, the wind detection satellite would have been destroyed immediately."

When it comes to the bad things about Starlink satellites, as an expert in satellite research, Zhan Kunhu is full of anger.

He even gave a conclusion: "That Starlink satellite's built-in 'autonomous avoidance system' is better to be called a remote control system, which specifically controls Starlink satellites to collide with other satellites."

Other experts and engineers in the command center were also angry when they heard this.

Looking at the company's support now, it is obvious that its own aerospace department has gradually become the first department in Jiuzhou Technology Company, and even the Titanium Star Department has to assist its own department.

If some projects are really slow in the future because of Starlink satellites, or even have a certain score drop in the eyes of the company's senior management, it will be more than worth the loss.

Li Jian listened to Zhan Kunhu's anger, but he still remained calm.

"Although our Daxia Tiangong space seems to be still, it is actually always maintaining a high-speed movement of 7.68 kilometers per second. Under normal circumstances, it only takes 90 minutes to circle the blue planet.

And our spacecraft carrying Ergou this time takes about 100 minutes.

When the relative speed difference is relatively small, two spacecraft on the same axis and moving in the right direction can come into contact, just like the aerial refueling of fighter jets and the docking mission between space stations and space shuttles, and there will not be too many problems.

However, if this speed exceeds the safety threshold. It is extremely easy to lead to extremely serious consequences. For precision satellites and other spacecraft, even ordinary collisions are enough to destroy the stability and integrity of their equipment structures, directly affect the normal operation of the equipment, and even cause equipment damage.

Previously, at an important meeting, experts from Daxia Aerospace Group revealed to us that the two approaches of Starlink satellites had obvious control operations, and they judged that they were all human-controlled.

After the first collision failed, the second action of Starlink satellite was more dangerous, and it continued to change orbits for several times, which made our Daxia Tiangong Space Station completely unable to evaluate and predict its movement direction and error, and could only implement emergency collision avoidance and leave the established orbit. "

The staff who can enter this command center have a considerable amount of knowledge in the field of aerospace, so they all know that Mask has bad intentions.

According to the chief engineer's narration, some new employees planted a seed of distrust and even anger towards the Starlink project in their hearts.