Elon Musk’s SpaceX Satellites Pose Growing Collision Threat in Low-Earth Orbit

POLICY WIRE — City, Country — The proliferation of man-made objects in space, including over 10,000 items linked to SpaceX, is heightening the danger of collisions.

Low-Earth orbit, extending up to approximately 1,200 miles above the Earth, is becoming increasingly crowded with satellites. This congestion raises the likelihood of an accidental crash or malicious action triggering a cascade effect that could disrupt critical technical infrastructure or result in debris falling to Earth.

Hugh Lewis, a professor of astronautics at the University of Birmingham, recently expressed his concerns to Space.com, stating, We are moving towards a scenario where a collision involving an operational satellite in the constellation is inevitable. This will occur despite all efforts to prevent such incidents.

There are currently more than 30,000 objects in low-Earth orbit, with over 10,000 of them associated with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, as revealed by an analysis from The Wall Street Journal.

SpaceX operates the largest satellite network in history and offers satellite-based internet through its Starlink service. The company asserts that its satellites continuously assess their trajectories and execute maneuvers when the probability of a collision surpasses three in ten million. According to federal disclosures, SpaceX satellites have performed over 355,000 collision avoidance maneuvers in the past year.

Although collisions between satellites are currently rare, the risks persist. The density of satellites in low-Earth orbit may increase at a faster rate than the rate at which defunct satellites and space debris burn up in the atmosphere, complicating each subsequent generation of satellite launches.

U.S. adversaries have previously destroyed their own satellites. For instance, in 2007, China struck a weather satellite with a ground-launched missile, and in 2021, Russia used a missile to destroy one of its satellites, generating more than 1,500 pieces of debris.

The space and scientific community is still debating whether there is a maximum number of satellites that should operate in low-Earth orbit and whether this limit has already been exceeded.

Jonny Dyer, the chief executive of satellite company Muon Space, told the Wall Street Journal that the risk is not about the number of satellites but rather the presence of bad actors or negligence.

The number of satellites in space is expected to continue growing rapidly as companies strive to compete with SpaceX and explore orbital data centers for artificial intelligence. The decreasing cost of space launches and the shrinking size of satellites are anticipated to further increase the density of objects in space.

China has submitted plans for 200,000 new satellites this year, while SpaceX, Amazon, and Blue have filed applications with U.S. officials to eventually deploy more than one million orbital data centers in space over the next decade.

There is no single international body governing orbital traffic, although companies, governments, and scientific entities attempt to coordinate satellite trajectories.

Giovanni Lavezzi, an orbital capacity researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently told Scientific American, So far, it seems manageable. The question is how much more we can push.

Reporting by Policy-Wire (PW)