Washington: Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Tuesday rejected a report by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) highlighting dangers posed by Starlink satellite constellation to humans on Earth, calling it "inaccurate" having based on a “flawed analysis”.
The company also urged the U.S. regulators to "improvise” the findings" by terming them "preposterous and unjustified” and a “guesswork”.
In an open letter released Tuesday, the aerospace giant maintained that the report relied "on a deeply flawed analysis that falsely characterises re-entry disposal risks associated with Starlink."
"To be clear, SpaceX’s satellites are designed and built to fully demise during atmospheric re-entry during disposal at the end of life, and they do so”, the company said.
SpaceX also accused the Aerospace Corporation, the non-profit group that contributed to the report, for not mentioning the analysis of SpaceX pertaining to the satellite disposal.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp, commonly referred to as SpaceX owned by Tech billionaire and CEO Tesla Elon Musk, has launched 5,000 Starlink satellites since 2019.
SpaceX has permission from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to grow the constellation to 12,000.
The company is now also seeking international approvals to eventually expand to 40,000 Starlinks in orbit.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in its report submitted to the members of Congress on October 5 painted a bleak picture of the dangers posed by the constellation of Musk’s Starlink satellites.
"By 2035 if the expected large constellation growth is realised and debris from Starlink satellites survive re-entry, one person on the planet would be expected to be injured or killed every two years”, the report said.
According to the report’s estimation, the probability of an aircraft suffering an accident with falling space debris could be 0.0007 per year by 2035.
SpaceX explained in its report that 325 satellites were deorbited since February 2020, and no debris has been found.
Meanwhile, the Aerospace Corporation in a statement issued Tuesday afternoon said: "Our technical team is in communication with SpaceX and others to review and update the data."
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