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on June 28. With more and more automatic navigation satellites in low earth orbit, the risk of spacecraft collision is also increasing. NASA plans to cooperate with SpaceX through the Starling mission to explore how to avoid collisions between autonomous navigation satellites

it is reported that NASA's starling mission includes four cube satellites. NASA initially planned to launch the four satellites into an orbit 555 kilometers above the earth. Since SpaceX's "star chain" Internet satellites operate at the same altitude, NASA's Association assessment risk analysis (Cara) team urges starling mission management department to put four cubes into orbit more than 10 kilometers higher than the operating altitude of "star chain"

howardcannon, the Starling project manager of NASA Ames Research Center, said: "these two satellite networks are very close to each other, giving us the opportunity to study how to deal with space traffic when more spacecraft fly in low earth orbit in the future." "Considering the number of spacecraft in space, how can we avoid collisions?"

after completing a series of experiments on swarm communication, navigation and automatic operation for six months, the Cara team, Starling task and SpaceX's "star chain" will cooperate to test the collision avoidance strategy

"then, the connection analysis software on the ground will automatically say, 'Hey, if you don't do something, you will bump into each other,'" cannon said

the alarm will be sent to the satellite, and the satellite will implement the corresponding strategy. However, before implementing evasion measures, the satellite will seek approval from the ground system

this type of coordination will be essential due to the surge in traffic flow in the low earth orbit. "You can't involve humans," cannon said. "In the future, all this must be completely automated."

moriba Jah, associate professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, agrees. "Most people don't realize that there are also data transmission congestion problems in space," Jah said. "There is no way to transmit information from the satellite to the ground at a speed fast enough to calculate and send commands back to the satellite. Given the current infrastructure, we do not have enough time to achieve this."

Jah said that through cooperation, Starling mission and star chain will show how the two satellite networks "communicate with each other and begin to implement their respective rights of way". (Chenchen)