SpaceX is calling out rival satellite launchers after a series of near-miss collisions with its Starlink network.
In a blog post published on Tuesday, Elon Musk’s rocket company warned that operators who don’t share their satellites’ trajectories are playing a dangerous game of chicken in Earth’s orbit.
SpaceX, which has around 11,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, said that the satellite internet network has had potential near-miss collisions with about 650 satellites this year, half of which did not share their position.
In its blog post, SpaceX flagged two particularly dangerous near-misses.
In August, one of its satellites came within 134 meters of another satellite, with the Starlink satellite forced to rotate its arrays to a “knife-edge profile” to duck out of the way of its neighbor after it unexpectedly changed direction.
SpaceX said a Starlink satellite narrowly missed another object in October 2025, after the other satellite changed its trajectory to put it on a path that would have passed within 57 meters of the Starlink relay.
However, we cannot mitigate risk when another operator maneuvers without sharing a predicted trajectory that includes the burn.
This is the biggest risk in LEO pic.twitter.com/5sqbmW1aD7— Starlink (@Starlink) October 6, 2026
SpaceX makes data on the trajectories of its Starlink satellites publicly available, but not every operator does, and the company said these gaps are increasing the risk of a catastrophic collision.
Astronomers have for years warned that the growing number of objects in orbit increases the risk of a runaway cascade of satellite collisions, creating a cloud of debris that could make some parts of Earth’s orbit unusable or even block humanity’s access to space entirely.
In its blog post, SpaceX said that its Starlink network had observed around 164,000 potential near-miss collisions over the past six months. The company said that it had reached out to other operators to alert them of flaws in their collision screening, some of which they were not aware of until SpaceX informed them.
It’s not the first time SpaceX has railed against a lack of space in space. The Starship launcher said in January it would move around 4,400 Starlink satellites to reduce the risk of collisions, months after a near-miss with nine Chinese satellites.
According to data published by SpaceX, the vast majority of satellites that had close encounters with Starlink this year, which did not share their trajectory data, originated in China.
SpaceX has also faced complaints in the past about the orbits of its Starlink satellites. In 2021, China complained to the United Nations that two Starlink satellites had nearly collided with the country’s Tiangong space station.
SpaceX is gearing up to massively expand Starlink, which is already the world’s largest satellite constellation by far. Elon Musk has said the rocket giant plans to launch up to 100,000 Starlink satellites and as many as one million orbital data centers in the coming years.
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