{"id":198862,"date":"2025-12-24T00:26:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T00:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/198862\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T00:26:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T00:26:07","slug":"chinese-and-starlink-satellites-nearly-collide-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/198862\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese and Starlink satellites nearly collide in space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Two satellites, one Starlink and one Chinese, nearly collided this month as low Earth orbit fills up.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The two came <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\/844502\/starlink-and-chinese-satellites-nearly-collided-last-week\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:within some 650 feet;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">within some 650 feet<\/a> of each other. There are at least 24,000 objects, including debris and satellites, in LEO, and there could be 70,000 satellites by 2030.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Close passes are increasingly common: <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2025-12-days-disaster-earth-orbit.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Two satellites pass within a kilometer (0.62 miles) of each other every 22 seconds;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Two satellites pass within a kilometer (0.62 miles) of each other every 22 seconds<\/a>, new research suggested.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Chart enumerating objects in Earth orbit\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"800\" height=\"388\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/ny\/api\/res\/1.2\/0fdJi_e1z5PdZD6VHiRevw--\/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTQ2NjtjZj13ZWJw\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/semafor_310\/77b339e13d9180d314322ca45b83ae24\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Chart enumerating objects in Earth orbit<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The potential outcome is \u201cKessler syndrome,\u201d in which one collision creates a debris cloud, causing other collisions and eventually filling low orbit with shards of metal traveling at five miles a second.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Satellites can adjust their positions to avoid crashes, but need to know where other objects are to do so.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.semafor.com\/author\/tom-chivers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Tom Chivers;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Tom Chivers<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two satellites, one Starlink and one Chinese, nearly collided this month as low Earth orbit fills up. The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2634,111,139,69,16610,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-198862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-low-earth-orbit","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-satellites","13":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}