A collision in space was narrowly avoided last week when a newly deployed Chinese satellite came within a hundred meters of about 9,000 Starlink satellites currently operating in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX is blaming the satellite operator for not sharing location data.
“When satellite operators don’t share afferents for their satellites, space can get dangerously close,” wrote Michael Nichols, VP of StarLink Engineering. “A few days ago, 9 satellites were deployed from the launch of the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. As far as we know, there was no coordination or determination with existing satellites operating in space, resulting in a 200m close approach between the deployed satellites and Starlink-6079 (56120).”
The Starlink satellite is capable of automatically adjusting its course to avoid objects in its path. However, these items have been known to prevent systems from working. In the first six months of 2025, the Starlink spacecraft performed more than 144,000 such maneuvers.
“Our team is currently in contact for more details. All CAS space launches have selected their launch windows using ground-based space awareness systems to avoid known satellite/debris collisions. This is a mandatory procedure.”
The commercial space launch company, based in Guangzhou, China, then seemed to distance itself from blame, saying the incident “occurred approximately 48 hours after separation from the payload, by which time the launch mission was long over.”
According to the publication, more than 24,000 objects, including satellites and debris, are being tracked in low Earth orbit since 2019. place. And by the end of this decade, more than 70,000 satellites could be operating in the same region, mostly in service of space-based Internet constellations being launched by private and public organizations in the United States, China and Europe.
