Starlink almost had a space collision with a Chinese-launched satellite, and it only gets worse from here – Jalopnik

On December 12 at 1:42 a.m. EST, a Starlink satellite nearly crashed into a brand new satellite that SpaceX didn’t even know existed. This satellite had reached space only 48 hours earlier, launched from China by CAS Space. According to SpaceX’s vice president of engineering: Michael Nicholls“To our knowledge, there has been no coordination or deconfliction with existing satellites operating in space, resulting in a close approach of 200 meters between one of the deployed satellites and STARLINK-6079 (56120) at 560 km altitude.” 200 meters! In terms of space, they were essentially giving a high five. It could have been so much worse.

Whose satellite was this? That remains unclear; CAS launched orbiters from China, the UAE, Egypt and even Nepal during that mission Space.com. What Nicholls is saying is that whoever it was, they didn’t warn the rest of the space world about its trajectory or even presence, but simply flung its orbiter around the world blindly. As an astronomer Jonathan McDowell points out that there is currently no agreed system for this, but “we really need… an *international* space surveillance and coordination system with both the US and China participating.” Otherwise, there is nothing that forces someone to actually fly safely through space. However rough the state of air traffic control may be, at least it exists! There is no space traffic control. But we’ll need one sooner or later.

Would a crash all the way in space matter that much? You’ll be happy to hear that the answer is yes, in a gruesome way! For starters, crashes create debris, which can collide with more satellites, creating more debris, potentially leading to a chain reaction that wipes out all the orbiters and makes space inaccessible (the so-called Kessler syndrome). On the other hand, some of that debris will crash to Earth, possibly in a populated area, causing massive damage. So it’s good news that Starlink didn’t crash into this other satellite, but as a sign of the times it’s a shot across the bow.