Billionaire Elon Musk was taken to task on Chinese social media on Tuesday after two of his satellites, according to Beijing, narrowly missed colliding with the Asian giant’s space station.
The richest man in the world, who has just been voted personality of the year by the American magazine Time, is well known in China for his Tesla electric cars. But his space exploration company SpaceX is now earning him the resentment of Internet users.
According to a document sent at the beginning of December by Beijing to the Office for Outer Space Affairs of the UN in Vienna, the Chinese space station Tiangong had to twice, in July and October, to carry out evasive maneuvers in order to avoid “a meeting. With SpaceX gear.
The Chinese space agency had to react “in order to ensure the safety and survival of astronauts in orbit,” Beijing added.
SpaceX did not react to this information on Tuesday, which displeased Chinese Internet users.
“Prepare to boycott Tesla,” said a user of the Weibo social network, under a hashtag seen more than 87 million times.
“There’s no shortage of irony: the Chinese are buying Tesla, giving Musk money to launch (satellites) and throw them at the Chinese space station,” thundered another.
The Chinese market is crucial for the multi-billionaire Canada-US of South African origin. Tesla sells about a quarter of its production to China and has a factory in Shanghai.
The automaker has, however, been the subject of criticism in recent months following accidents and data protection concerns.
In space, SpaceX launched a constellation of more than 1,500 satellites, Starlink, intended to bring connection to the Internet to the four corners of the globe.
This constellation has notably increased the circulation of objects in space.
“We have seen an increase in the number of collision risks since the start of the Starlink deployment,” commented AFP Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the United States.
China this year launched the main module of its Tiangong space station (the “heavenly palace”), whose construction is to be completed next year.
Two crews of three astronauts have followed one another since June.