According to The Verge, the Air Force squadron sent nine updates to both ESA and SpaceX in the 72 hours before the satellites were expected to make their closest approach. Faced with silence from SpaceX, ESA officials decided they’d be the ones to back down. They had to trust that SpaceX wouldn’t budge; if both satellites shifted positions, they could end up smacking into each other anyway. Musk has said the Starlink satellites are designed to receive warning alerts and maneuver autonomously around other objects—a procedure it has already tested more than a dozen times, according to Quartz. But it’s not clear whether this satellite was equipped with that technology, and the ESA situation suggests humans are still in the loop.
source: GoveExec
