China and NASA have cooperated for the first time to address the risk of satellite collisions.

Russian media attention: China has contacted NASA for the first time regarding the risk of collision between orbital satellites!

"You stay in place, we will make the maneuver."

On October 5, Russian newspapers published an article.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) stated that it has proposed a specific action plan to NASA for the first time, aiming to prevent possible collisions between satellites in orbit.

Elwin Drew, the head of NASA's Office of Sustainable Space at NASA and a former astronaut, explained the Chinese proposal: "You stay in place, we will make the maneuver."

According to him, this was the first time that the two space agencies achieved real bilateral information exchange.

For decades, the United States and China rarely communicated about preventing orbital incidents.

Usually, NASA would only notify CNSA of potential collision risks and state that U.S. satellites would perform maneuvers to avoid them, but the response was either silence or even no confirmation that the message had been received.

In a previous incident, both sides' spacecraft had performed maneuvers simultaneously, narrowly avoiding a collision.

Now the situation is gradually changing. In addition to national agencies, commercial operators have also started to establish contact: China's satellite constellations have already contacted OneWeb and SpaceX regarding coordination of orbital planning.

This coordination is particularly important against the backdrop of the rapid development of large constellations.

China plans to deploy two projects: "State Grid" (about 13,000 satellites) and "Thousand Sails" (about 15,000 satellites).

At the same time, Starlink satellites may expand to 42,000, and Amazon is also actively advancing its "Kuiper" system - a network that will include more than 3,000 satellites.

The increasing number of large space groups makes real-time data exchange between countries' agencies and companies essential.

Alvin Drew, director of NASA's Office of Sustainable Space, revealed that China has proposed to the U.S. side to give up autonomous maneuvering operations and transfer the relevant decision-making authority to China.

This move became the first true example of bilateral cooperation between the two space agencies.

Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1845094287461388/

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