From Fast Company, June 10:
The military space race is heating up. China is developing a robotic design that can intercept and shove away suspicious objects in space.
China is developing robotic guards for its Tiangong space station. Equipped with small thrusters, these AI-powered robotic beasts are being developed to intercept and physically shove suspicious objects away from its orbital outpost. It’s a deceptively simple but ingenious step towards active space defense in an increasingly militarized domain. Rather than firing directed energy weapons like lasers or projectiles, which will turn the potential invader into a cloud of deadly shrapnel flying at 21 times the speed of sound, the Chinese have thought of a very zen “reed that bends in the wind” kind of approach. The bots will grapple a threatening object and lightly push it out of harm’s way. Elegant space jiu-jitsu rather than brute kickboxing.
The announcement, made by scientist Sun Zhibin of China’s National Space Science Centre during a recent talk at Nanjing University of Science and Technology, comes as recent Pentagon reports reveal that China has already staged the first-ever satellite combat operations in low-Earth orbit. It marks a decisive shift from passive space exploration and coexistence to active territorial control at orbital altitudes.
Beijing indicates that it is not “arming” its space station out of aggression, but as a response to recent threats by a Starlink satellite, which grazed the Tiangong, prompting evasive maneuvers and strong formal protest in the UN by the Chinese delegation. However, it would be naive not to see it as part of the ongoing effort to dominate space by force, which is now ongoing in Russia, the United States, and China.
A logical design
China’s solution is actually the only possible design that makes sense. On Earth, when you destroy an aerial object, it falls to the ground, where it stays forever thanks to gravity. But firing a projectile at an object approaching a space station wouldn’t end a threat—it would unleash chaos....
....MUCH MORE
Note to Fido: In space, no one can here you bark.
