China reached out to NASA to avoid a potential satellite collision in 1st-of-its-kind space cooperation
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/china-reached-out-to-nasa-to-avoid-a-potential-satellite-collision-in-1st-of-its-kind-space-cooperation
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Snippet from this article : China recently reached out to NASA over a maneuver to prevent a possible collision between satellites, a space sustainability official said, marking a first for space traffic management.
“For years, if we had a conjunction, we would send a note to the Chinese saying, ‘We think we’re going to run into you. You hold still, we’ll maneuver around you,'” Alvin Drew, director for NASA Space Sustainability, said during a plenary session at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, Australia, on Oct. 2.
A big shift had come a day earlier, Drew revealed. “Just yesterday, we had a bit of a celebration because, for the first time, the Chinese National Space Agency reached out to us and said, ‘We see a conjunction amongst our satellites. We recommend you hold still. We’ll do the maneuver.’ And that’s the first time that’s ever happened,” Drew said.
You love to see the collaboration between two buddies ❤️
Imagine the Optics in present day Political Rage Bait Media if China fucks up and crashes into something the US owns.
China always copying.
Just kidding, obviously.
I thought that the CNSA and NASA already worked together to save that stranded astronaut on Mars.
In 2007 they uses a kinetic energy projectile to destroy one of their dead satellites. It created a huge debris field that was a hazard for LEO satellites for years.
Given that, I’d say this is a positive development.
Hopefully the first of many. Competition is good, cooperation is better.
I found this to be interesting:
“The development also indirectly suggests that China’s space situational awareness, or understanding what is going on in orbit at any moment, has reached the level of being able to flag conjunctions and begin to coordinate with other operators.
China noted this as a priority in a 2022 space white paper that outlined its ambitions for the period 2021 to 2026”
There’s an implication there that China’s tracking may have simply not been able to do this previously.
I know there’s been commentary that China simply doesn’t care about orbital debris, especially after that anti satellite missile test, but I do find that hard to reconcile with a nation with a long history of playing the long game, strategically speaking.