Billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk is facing a social media backlash after China has complained that its space station was forced to take evasive action to avoid collision with satellites launched by Musk’s Starlink programme.
Starlink is a satellite internet network operated by Mr. Musk’s SpaceX.
Mr. Musk is well known in China even as his electric carmaker Tesla comes under growing scrutiny from regulators.
“For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented preventive collision avoidance control,” China said in a document published on the website of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.
After the complaint was made public, Mr Musk, Starlink and the US were heavily criticised on China’s Twitter-like Weibo microblogging platform.
One user described Starlink’s satellites as “just a pile of space junk”.
The satellites are “American space warfare weapons” and “Musk is a new ‘weapon’ created by the US government and military”, others said.
Another posted: “The risks of Starlink are being gradually exposed, the whole human race will pay for their business activities.”