SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk gestures after arriving on the red carpet for the Axel Springer award, in Berlin, Germany, December 1, 2020
Credit: Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have taken their feud into space as their duelling plans to fill the sky with satellite "megaconstellations" threaten to encroach on each other’s orbits.
The two billionaires, who are roughly neck and neck to be Earth’s first and second richest people, are pushing US regulators to favour their satellite networks, which will beam down internet signal to some of the planet’s most remote areas.
SpaceX, Mr Musk’s company, already has more than a thousand of its Starlink "microsatellites" in order out of a planned 12,000, and now wants to lower the orbit of around 2,800 of them in order to improve broadband speeds and lower the danger of future space debris.
But Mr Bezos’s Amazon argues that Starlink’s new orbit would interfere with signals and create a danger of collision with its own $10bn (£7.3bn) Kuiper project, which has not yet launched any of its 3,236 satellites.
On Tuesday, Mr Musk criticised Amazon’s objection on Twitter, saying: "It does not serve the public to hamstring Starlink today for an Amazon satellite system that is at best several years away from operation."
It does not serve the public to hamstring Starlink today for an Amazon satellite system that is at best several years away from operation
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 26, 2021
In a submission to the last week, SpaceX said that predictions of interference were based on "cherry-picked" data and accused Amazon of "demanding exclusive access" to lower orbits without "launching a single satellite".
Amazon quickly shot back, saying: "The facts are simple. We designed the Kuiper System to avoid interference with Starlink, and now SpaceX wants to change the design of its system.
"Those changes not only create a more dangerous environment for collisions in space, but they also increase radio interference for customers. Despite what SpaceX posts on Twitter, it is SpaceX’s proposed changes that would hamstring competition among satellite systems.
"It is clearly in SpaceX’s interest to smother competition in the cradle if they can, but it is certainly not in the public’s interest."
The escalating tussle over territory represents a new phase in private space flight, suggesting that companies may compete just as fiercely as Russia and the US did during the Cold War.
Amazon and SpaceX’s dispute focuses on their differing orbital "shells", meaning layers of space at different distances from the Earth’s surface where large numbers of satellites can orbit without crossing over.
Serious collisions in space have been relatively rare, but the rush of new microsatellite companies such as SpaceX and the British-Government-owned OneWeb could make them much more common in the future.
SpaceX asked the FCC last year to let it move 2,824 of its future satellites into a lower shell, from between 1,100 and 1,300 km to between 540 and 570 km, with a 30 km buffer for error.
Amazon objected, noting that the buffer would overlap with its lowest approved shell for Kuiper, which is set at 590 km with a buffer of 9 km. The argument has continued despite concessions,
Scientists have long worried that collisions in space could create a chain reaction of debris known as "Kessler syndrome", potentially damaging communications networks on Earth by knocking out existing satellites.
In 2019, a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite was forced to fire its thrusters to avoid an unacceptable risk of hitting a Starlink satellite.
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