Chinese citizens blast Musk following space station near miss
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After putting China's space station at risk, Elon Musk is under fire over his Starlink program.
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Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk
Chinese citizens bashed billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk over one of his satellites' forcing a Chinese space station to take evasive action to avoid a collision.
Musk's Starlink program satellites had two close encounters with the Chinese space station on July 1 and October 21, a Chinese document presented to the UN's space agency earlier this month said.
"For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented preventive collision avoidance control," China said in a document published on the website of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.
In a post on China's Weibo, users were bashing Elon Musk, and his satellite program, with some describing them as "a pile of space junk."
With some 30,000 satellites and other debris believed to be orbiting the planet, Musk's SpaceX alone has deployed nearly 1,900 to serve its Starlink broadband network, with more underway.
America's NASA was forced to call off a spacewalk toward the end of November, citing risks posed by space debris. Musk later announced that some of his satellites' orbits were changed in order to reduce the possibility of collisions.
China began constructing its space station in April with the launch of Tianhe, its largest module. The station is set to be completed by the end of 2022 after four crewed missions.
This is not the first time that Elon Musk's endeavors put others at risk, as his Tesla cars were investigated by the United States for putting drivers and passengers at risk.
US federal traffic safety inspectors said Wednesday they had opened investigations against Tesla models that allowed a game to be played during driving, which could cause distractions and increase the chances of a crash.
