Staggering growth in Starlink collision-avoidance maneuvers in the past six months is sparking concerns over the long-term sustainability of satellite operations as thousands of new spacecraft are poised to launch into orbit in the coming years.
SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellites were forced to swerve more than 25,000 times between Dec. 1, 2022, and May 31, 2023 to avoid potentially dangerous approaches to other spacecraft and orbital debris, according to a report filed by SpaceX with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on June 30. That's about double the number of avoidance maneuvers reported by SpaceX in the previous six-month period that ran from June to November 2022. Since the launch of the first Starlink spacecraft in 2019, the SpaceX satellites have been forced to move over 50,000 times to prevent collisions.
