Chinese diplomat calls for countries to better enforce regulations on their commercial space activities
Beijing has warned the United Nations that the rapid expansion of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite constellations in low-Earth orbit pose “pronounced safety and security” concerns globally.
“With the rapid expansion of commercial space activities, the unchecked proliferation of commercial satellite constellations by a certain country, in the absence of effective regulation, has given rise to pronounced safety and security challenges,” a Chinese representative said at an informal UN Security Council event.
The Beijing representative cited several incidents, including near collisions between Starlink satellites and the Chinese space station in 2021.
Referring to SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, the representative said that “such constellations crowd frequency-orbit resources [data shared by all satellites in orbit for communication] and significantly increase the risk of collisions”, SCMP first reported.
Several recent studies have warned that as the number of satellites in orbit increase rapidly in the era of mega-constellations like SpaceX Starlink probes, there is rapidly increasing chances of satellite collisions.
Currently, as many as 8,500 of the 12,955 active satellites in low-Earth orbit, with just over 66 per cent part of these probes part of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.
SpaceX chief Elon Musk has said the Starlink constellation could eventually have over 42,000 satellites, with the company currently having permission to launch 12,000.
Each of these satellites is designed for a five-year lifespan before it is deliberately burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Meanwhile, Chinese projects, including the Quianfan broadband network, plans to launch their own internet satellite megaconstellations rivalling SpaceX.
The Shanghai state-backed project aims to mass produce and launch over 15,000 satellites by 2030 to provide global broadband coverage.
With the low-Earth orbit increasingly getting crowded since 2018, the Chinese representative called for countries to better enforce regulations on their commercial space activities.
The diplomat said a Starlink satellite in 2021 “conducted dangerous close approaches to China’s space station ... posing grave threats to the safety of Chinese astronauts”.
“For spacecraft operated by developing countries that lack orbit-control capability, space situational awareness, or sufficient reaction time, this undoubtedly constitutes a major risk,” the unnamed representative said in a statement.
SpaceX has not immediately responded to The Independent’s request for comment.
Beijing also warned that commercial satellites are increasingly being used for reconnaissance and battlefield communications, which “aggravated the risk of an arms race in outer space”.
The diplomat called on the US in a veiled reference to “strengthen regulation and oversight of its commercial space activities, and respond to the concerns of the international community”.
Friday, January 2, 2026
Russia Fell Further and Further Behind China for Second Place in Space Race in 2025
Paul Goble
Staunton, Jan. 1 – In Soviet times, Moscow’s space program competed with that of the United States; but now, it is falling behind China, which is launching more satellites into orbit, has more facilities to launch them, and has developed public-private cooperation to the point that it can respond to challenges far more quickly and efficiently, Mariya Sokolova says.
The Novyye Izvestiya observer points out that the Chinese successfully launched 86 rockets in 2025, 30 percent more than it had a year earlier, while Russia remained far behind with the same number this past year as in 2024 – 17 (newizv.ru/news/2025-12-30/kitay-nam-drug-no-kosmos-dorozhe-est-li-shans-u-rossii-ne-sdat-kosmos-kitaytsam-438498).
Moreover, Sokolova notes, China now has four working cosmodromes, while Russia has only three – and one of those has suffered sufficient damages to delay takeoffs for the time being. But what is most striking is China’s use of private companies to power the expansion of its space program, something Russia has not done.
These companies have allowed China to innovate far more rapidly than Russia can, given that Moscow as far as space is concerned largely rests on its laurels from the Soviet past, and to put vehicles into service far more rapidly to rescue its astronauts when problems have arisen in space station components.
And the observer concludes that it is “unfortunately” true that “the Russian Federation lives in the past while the Chinese Peoples Republic lives in the future,” a pattern that if it continues for much longer will further marginalize Russia and give China the chance to challenge the US for leadership in space much as Moscow did decades ago.
January 2, 2026, Friday
Bulgaria has officially joined the European Union’s secure satellite system, gaining access to a coordinated mechanism for managing radio frequencies and orbital resources, as well as the capacity to use secure satellite communications at a continental level.
“This concerns telecommunications satellites that track objects in space and alert countries that may be affected. Essentially, it is connected to the issue of space debris, which fills near-Earth orbit and can threaten the security of satellite infrastructure. Monitoring their positions and trajectories is therefore essential,” explained Assoc. Prof. Elisaveta Peneva, a meteorologist and remote Earth observation specialist, on NOVA News.
Until now, Bulgaria had not been part of this system. With approval from the Ministry of Innovation and Growth, the country will now utilize its ground infrastructure to monitor these objects and provide warnings to relevant users.
Among the services offered by the system is the ability to track satellites when they are decommissioned or re-enter the atmosphere to burn up, marking the end of their operational life. Assoc. Prof. Peneva emphasized that such processes must be carefully monitored along their entire path. Satellites or debris could pass over Bulgarian territory without being tracked if the country were not part of the system, making participation a significant security advantage.
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