One of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites just dodged a bullet in orbit.
This ball was one of nine spacecraft launched atop a Chinese Kinetica 1 rocket on Tuesday (December 9) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert. He came dangerously close to a Star link satellite, according to EspaceXwho wasn’t very happy with the close shave.
“As far as we know, no coordination or deconfliction with the satellites a space operation was carried out, resulting in a 200 meter close approach between one of the deployed satellites and STARLINK-6079 (56120) at 560 km altitude. Most of the risks associated with space operations come from a lack of coordination between satellite operators – this needs to change,” said Michael Nicolls, vice president of Starlink engineering at SpaceX. said via on Friday evening (December 12).
Kinetica 1 is a 30 meter high solid fuel. rocket operated by CAS Space. The company, based in Guangzhou, responded to Nicolls’ post, saying it had carried out due diligence as a launch service provider (LSP) but was nevertheless investigating the incident.
“Our team is currently in contact for further details. All CAS Space launches select their launch windows using the Ground Space Awareness System to avoid collisions with known satellites/debris. This is a mandatory procedure. We will work on identifying the exact details and provide assistance as LSP”, CAS Space said via Friday evening.
“If confirmed, this incident occurred nearly 48 hours after payload separation, by which time the launch mission was long over. CAS Space will coordinate with satellite operators to continue. This requires reestablishing collaborations between the two New Space ecosystems,” the company added. another post a few hours later.
Tuesday’s Kinetica 1 launch launched “six Chinese multifunctional satellites, an Earth observation satellite for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a science satellite for Egypt, and an education satellite for Nepal.”[UnitedArabEmirates}ascientificsatelliteforEgyptandaneducationalsatelliteforNepal”[UnitedArabEmirates}ascientificsatelliteforEgyptandaneducationalsatelliteforNepal”according to China Daily. Nicolls’ message did not specify which of these spacecraft approached the Starlink satellite.
The coordination mentioned by Nicolls becomes more and more important, as Earth’s orbit becomes more and more crowded. In 2020 for example, less than 3,400 functional satellites orbited our planet. Five years later, this figure increased to approximately 13,000and more and more spaceships are rising all the time.
Most of them belong to SpaceX. The company currently operates nearly 9,300 Starlink satellitesof which more than 3,000 have been launched this year alone.
Starlink satellites autonomously avoid potential collisions, moving away from conjunctions predicted by available tracking data. And this type of evasive action is quite common: the Starlink spacecraft performed approximately 145,000 avoidance maneuvers during the first six months of 2025, which equates to approximately four maneuvers per satellite per month.
This is an impressive record. But many other spacecraft aren’t as capable, and even Starlink satellites can be caught off guard by spacecraft whose operators don’t share their trajectory data, as Nicolls noted.
And even a single collision – between two satellites, or involving pieces of space debriswhich are also abundant in Earth’s orbit, could generate a huge cloud of debris, which could cause further collisions. Indeed, the nightmare scenario, known as Kessler syndromeis a cascade of debris that makes satellite exploitation difficult, if not impossible, in parts of the final frontier.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 10:05 a.m. ET on December 13 to include another X message from CAS Space.
