Space is big, and for now it is mostly empty. Whether it stays workable for the next wave of satellite networks depends on one thing, according to a senior SpaceX executive: operators have to tell each other where their spacecraft are and where they are heading.
Michael Nicolls, SpaceX’s vice president for Starlink and president of Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, made that case on Tuesday in a presentation at the International Astronautical Congress in Turkey. Ars Technica reported that he framed it as a call for better data-sharing among satellite operators.
Crowded orbit, growing fast
Starlink now has more than 11,000 satellites, roughly two-thirds of all active spacecraft in low-Earth orbit. Radars and telescopes also track thousands of pieces of space junk as a matter of routine. And Starlink may be the smallest of the fleets to come. SpaceX has disclosed plans to launch up to a million satellites for a new constellation called Starmind, meant to put AI computing capacity in orbit. Amazon is in the early stages of launching thousands of satellites to rival Starlink, and two Chinese megaconstellations are in full-scale deployment.
The worry is a collision, which could throw off thousands of new fragments and set off a self-perpetuating cycle of debris. On any given day the odds are tiny, and low-Earth orbit is far from full. SpaceX and most other Western operators de-orbit their rockets and satellites at the end of their missions to avoid adding debris. Nicolls did not pretend that settles the matter. “The law of large numbers says that if it can happen, it will happen,” he said.
No rules of the road
The field that deals with this is known as space traffic management, and it has a long way to go on tracking, awareness and coordination. No global treaty or regulation requires satellites to broadcast their positions and manoeuvres, or obliges operators to coordinate with one another. In the absence of such rules, it falls to governments and companies to set norms of behaviour.
