SpaceX is pushing its Stargaze Space Management system to avoid collisions

A new tool from SpaceX for tracking satellites and other objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) could help prevent future satellite collisions, and is attracting significant industry interest by requiring users to provide data about their own satellites. Given concerns about opacity among some space agencies around the world, such a system could provide a more transparent view of how near-Earth space is developing, potentially preventing it from developing into a dangerous mess of intersecting orbits.

The system, known as Stargazinguses the star tracker cameras on SpaceX’s nearly 10,000 Starlink satellites to image objects in LEO, creating a detailed map of where everything is at any given time. Things like that could make a big difference in avoiding satellite collisions; SpaceX even claims that it was Stargaze that helped its satellite evade the Chinese rocket launch last year.

“Stargaze quickly discovered this maneuver and published an updated trajectory to the screening platform,” SpaceX explains (via Space News).

The detection allowed the Starlink satellite to adjust its trajectory and narrowly avoid a collision.

“With so little time to respond, this would not have been possible by relying on older radar systems or high-latency conjunction screening processes,” SpaceX said. “If observations from the third-party satellite had been less frequent, conjunction screening had taken longer, or if the response required human approval, such an event may not have been successfully mitigated.”

SpaceX allows other satellite providers to take advantage of Stargaze to improve the safety of their own satellites in orbit, but that comes at a price: They have to give up the ephemeris data that tells everyone where their satellites are and what maneuvers, if any, they have planned. Money doesn’t have to change hands, but you do have to transfer your information.

“While Stargaze can detect maneuvers faster than any other system currently in use, the most definitive source of satellite trajectories should be provided by the operators themselves, enabling deconfliction and minimizing collision avoidance maneuvers,” SpaceX said in its announcement, emphasizing that it updates its satellites’ ephemeris data hourly.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen repeated calls for orbital operators to “clean up” space near Earth to reduce the chance of collisions. Damage to a Chinese return vehicle last year by orbital debris showed how dangerous space can become as it becomes more crowded and difficult to map.

A system like Stargaze could make a major contribution to this. Joining the Office of Space Commerce and its TraCSS system will only help more.