A collision in space was narrowly avoided when a recently launched Chinese satellite came close to one of the roughly 9,000 Starlink satellites currently operating in low Earth orbit. The incident took place last week. SpaceX is blaming the satellite operator for failing to share location data .
“When satellite operators fail to share their satellite allocation data, dangerously close encounters can occur in space,” wrote Michael Nicolls, Starlink’s Vice President of Engineering. “A few days ago, 9 satellites were launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China. To our knowledge, no coordinated effort was made to avoid collisions with existing satellites operating in space, resulting in a close encounter of 200 meters between one of the launched satellites and STARLINK-6079 (56120) at an altitude of 560 kilometers.”
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Starlink satellites have the ability to automatically adjust their course to avoid objects in their path. However, these objects must be knownfor the avoidance system to work. In the first six months of 2025, Starlink spacecraft performed more than 144,000 such maneuvers.
The satellite in question was launched by CAS Space, which responded to Nicolls in X. “Our team is in touch for more details. All CAS Space launches select launch windows using ground-based space awareness to avoid collisions with known satellites/debris. This is a mandatory procedure.”
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The commercial space launch company, based in Guangzhou, China, then appeared to distance itself from responsibility, saying the incident “occurred nearly 48 hours after the payload was separated, so the launch mission had already been completed.”
Starlink satellites and other objects in low orbit
More than 24,000 objects, including satellites and debris, are currently being tracked in low Earth orbit, a 76% increase since 2019, according to a Space publication. By the end of this decade, there could be as many as 70,000 satellites operating in the same area, mostly in service of space internet constellations launched by private and government organizations in the US, China and Europe.
See also: Starlink: Reached 10,000 internet satellites
News of the near-collision will heighten concerns about so many spacecraft operating in the same area. According to the theory, any collision could trigger a Kessler syndrome, where space debris pollution becomes so dense in low Earth orbit (LEO) that collisions between objects create more and more debris. This could lead to an uncontrolled “domino” that could make the orbit unviable for satellites and space missions.
