SpaceX: 11,000 Starlink Satellites Need Better Orbit Coordination

SpaceX says its Starlink satellites have come within tens to hundreds of meters of other operators' spacecraft, and the company wants rival satellite operators to start sharing tracking data to prevent a collision, according to a presentation this week at the International Astronautical Congress in Turkey, reported by Ars Technica.

How many Starlink satellites are in orbit right now?

Starlink has more than 11,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit, according to Michael Nicolls, SpaceX's vice president for Starlink and president of Elon Musk's AI company, xAI. Nicolls told the Tuesday session in Turkey that Starlink now accounts for about two-thirds of all active spacecraft in low-Earth orbit. Radars and telescopes on the ground track thousands of additional pieces of space junk, Ars Technica reported.

How close did the near-misses get?

Nicolls described several incidents in which satellites belonging to other operators passed close to Starlink spacecraft as they moved at roughly 5 miles per second. "These led to conjunctions of tens of meters to hundreds of meters," Nicolls said, according to the Ars Technica report. "Way too close to comfort." He said the close approaches did not appear to involve nefarious intent, such as spying.

Why don't operators share tracking data?

There is no global treaty or regulation that requires satellite operators to broadcast their locations and planned maneuvers, Ars Technica reported. That leaves data-sharing up to individual governments and companies, with no uniform rule of the road. Nicolls compared trackable debris to obstacles on a highway: predictable and avoidable if operators measure them. The real danger, he said, comes from "other operators who maneuver without telling you where they're going to go. We have many examples of this on Starlink, unfortunately."

What is SpaceX asking other companies to do?

Nicolls' message to the industry was straightforward: share positional and maneuver data so every operator can calculate and avoid conjunctions in advance. SpaceX and most Western operators already de-orbit rockets and satellites at the end of their missions to limit debris, according to the report. Nicolls argued that low-Earth orbit still has room for new constellations, but only if operators coordinate. "The law of large numbers says that if it can happen, it will happen," he said, pointing to the risk that a single collision could scatter thousands of new debris fragments and trigger further collisions.

Who else is launching satellites that could collide with Starlink?

The crowding problem is set to grow. SpaceX has disclosed plans for a constellation called Starmind, with up to a million satellites intended to run AI computing workloads in orbit, Ars Technica reported. Amazon is in the early stages of building its own satellite network to compete with Starlink. Two Chinese megaconstellations are now in full-scale deployment as well, adding more spacecraft to a band of orbit that, while still mostly empty, is filling up fast with hardware moving at orbital speed.

For now, there is no regulator forcing the issue. The decision on whether to share tracking data, and how fast, rests with each company and government flying hardware overhead.