SpaceX says Starlink had close approaches with about 650 other satellites this year, and it wants every satellite operator to share flight paths and planned maneuvers. About half of those operators did not share that data, SpaceX says. The company made its case in a post on its own site in early October, so the numbers in this story are SpaceX’s own, not an outside audit.
What SpaceX says
Starlink now has more than 11,000 satellites. SpaceX says that over six months it logged about 164,000 close approaches that happened within four hours of another satellite making an unannounced move. Not all of those were high risk, the company says. It also says that without advance data, tracking systems can lose a satellite for hours or days after it moves.
SpaceX describes two close calls. In August, a Starlink satellite came within 134 meters of another satellite that changed direction without notice, and Starlink avoided it by turning its solar array edge-on. In October 2025, another satellite’s orbit change brought it as close as 57 meters. Satellites in low orbit travel at roughly 7.5 kilometers per second, so gaps measured in tens of meters leave almost no margin.
What SpaceX is doing
SpaceX says it publishes updated Starlink flight paths every hour and offers a free platform that helps operators spot possible collisions. A SpaceX executive also said this week that space has room for more megaconstellations, but only if every operator shares where its satellites are and where they are going.
What is not known
SpaceX says many of the satellites that did not share data were launched from China. It has not named the operators involved, as far as we can find, and we have not found a response from them. We have also not seen the figures checked independently.
Our take: SpaceX is both the largest operator in orbit and the one making the case, so treat the numbers as its account. The call for open data is hard to argue with, since no one benefits from a collision. The weak point is that sharing is voluntary, and we have found no rule that forces it. SpaceX also has plans to grow Starlink to as many as 100,000 satellites, which would make this problem larger.
