Starlink Satellites Now Dodging Collisions Almost Weekly as Maneuvers Triple in a Year

SpaceX's Starlink satellites performed more than 355,000 collision avoidance maneuvers over the past year, meaning each spacecraft now dodges debris and other satellites on an almost weekly basis. The figure, drawn from SpaceX's latest semiannual disclosure to the Federal Communications Commission, marks more than three times the number the constellation carried out in 2024. Experts warn that the pace of maneuvering, while a sign the system is working, cannot continue rising indefinitely without eventual risk of an operational collision.

The increase coincides with rapid growth of the constellation and the broader satellite population. Starlink expanded from about 6,000 satellites in 2024 to more than 10,000 as of June 2026. Over the same period, the total number of operational spacecraft in orbit rose from around 10,000 to roughly 16,000.

Between December 2025 and May 2026, Starlink satellites performed 207,152 avoidance maneuvers, up nearly 60,000 from the 148,696 reported in the previous half year. On average, each Starlink satellite carried out more than 40 maneuvers per year between June 1, 2025 and May 31, 2026. The constellation orbits at altitudes between 480 and 550 kilometers and uses an autonomous collision avoidance system that initiates a maneuver when the probability of a collision exceeds 3 in 10 million.

Hugh Lewis, a space sustainability expert and professor of astronautics at the University of Birmingham, said SpaceX is doing an excellent job managing orbital traffic but that steep growth carries risk. "I think we're heading towards a situation where there will be a collision involving an operational satellite in the constellation," Lewis said. "And it will not be for the lack of trying to avoid those things. It will be in spite of all those maneuvers." He noted that each maneuver reduces collision probability to about one in a million, small enough to be negligible individually, but that aggregate risk across the constellation cannot be eliminated.

Tommaso Sgobba, director of the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, said the rise in maneuvers is a predictable certainty. "The more satellites you pack into [an orbital] shell, the more pairs of satellites exist that could potentially cross paths," he wrote. "Double the satellites in a shell and you roughly quadruple the number of pairs that need to be watched." Sgobba added that collision probability predictions are highly inaccurate because the effects of air drag, which shift with space weather, are currently impossible to predict, leaving operators unable to distinguish real threats from statistical noise and "frequently dodging ghosts, burning fuel and shortening their operational lives in the process."

Lewis said SpaceX will likely have made a million avoidance maneuvers over the constellation's lifetime as early as June 2027, and that by 2030 the constellation may make more than a million maneuvers every year, a point at which the one in a million residual risk may no longer be negligible. He said the only way to safely manage multiple constellations is to ensure their orbits do not intersect, though he noted this raises questions of orbital carrying capacity and first mover advantage.

SpaceX has applied to the FCC to increase the size of its constellation to 100,000 satellites. Sgobba called for predicted numbers of collision avoidance maneuvers to be mandatorily disclosed to regulators before applications are granted, arguing that regulators should ask for these numbers up front rather than reacting to headlines about near misses after the fact.