SpaceX plans a wider rollout allowing operators who share trajectory data to receive Stargaze conjunction alerts and ephemeris from other participants.
SpaceX has announced the development of a new Space Situational Awareness (SSA) system called Stargaze, designed to significantly improve the safety and sustainability of satellite operations in low Earth orbit (LEO). The company said it will begin making Stargazes conjunction screening data freely available to the wider satellite operator community in the coming weeks.
The move comes amid growing congestion in LEO, driven by practices such as leaving spent rocket bodies in orbit, satellites manoeuvring without sharing their trajectories, and anti-satellite testing by governments. These factors have increased the risk of collisions, while traditional tracking methodsoften limited to a small number of daily observationscan lead to large uncertainties in orbital predictions, further affected by rapidly changing space weather.
Stargaze represents a major leap in detection capability compared with conventional ground-based systems. It leverages data from nearly 30,000 star trackers across the SpaceX fleet, each continuously monitoring nearby objects. Together, these sensors detect roughly 30 million object transits every day, providing a far more detailed picture of activity in orbit.
The system autonomously identifies orbiting objects and aggregates observations to generate accurate, near real-time estimates of their position and velocity. These predictions are fed into a space-traffic management platform that flags potential close approaches and generates Conjunction Data Messages (CDMs). SpaceX said Stargaze can deliver conjunction screening results within minutes, compared with the several hours typically required by existing industry processes.
To improve overall space safety, SpaceX will make Stargaze conjunction data available free of charge through its space-traffic management platform. The platform has already been tested in a closed beta with more than a dozen satellite operators, enabling low-latency sharing of ephemeris data and conjunction screening. From this spring, operators who submit their own trajectory predictions to the platform will receive CDMs generated using Stargaze data, alongside information from other participating operators.
SpaceX highlighted a recent incident in late 2025 as an example of Stargazes effectiveness. A Starlink satellite was predicted to safely pass a third-party satellite at a distance of about 9,000 metres. However, five hours before the encounter, the third-party satellite conducted an unannounced maneuver that reduced the miss distance to approximately 60 metres. Stargaze rapidly detected the change, updated the trajectory, and issued new CDMs, allowing the Starlink satellite to plan and execute an avoidance maneuver within an hour, eliminating the risk of collision.
According to SpaceX, such a response would not have been possible using legacy radar systems or slower conjunction screening workflows. Less frequent observations, longer processing times, or reliance on manual intervention could have prevented timely mitigation of the event.
While Stargaze offers a significant advance in orbital safety, SpaceX stressed that frequent sharing of ephemeris data by satellite operators remains essential, particularly for fleets capable of maneuvering. Although Stargaze can detect maneuvers faster than any system currently in use, the most reliable source of trajectory information is still the operators themselves. SpaceX noted that Starlink updates and shares its ephemeris publicly every hour and urged other operators to adopt similar practices.
Drawing a comparison with commercial aviation, SpaceX said that just as aircraft avoid collisions by broadcasting their position and flight plans, spacecraft operators should follow the same basic principle by sharing predicted trajectories to support deconfliction and reduce unnecessary collision avoidance maneuvers.
