Elon Musk unveils Stargaze: SpaceX’s strategy to tackle space debris

Elon Musk has revealed SpaceX’s newly launched initiative “Stargaze”, aiming to protect space and low Earth orbit.

Taking to X, the CEO of the aerospace company posted, “SpaceX is now providing precise positional awareness of objects in Earth orbit to all satellite operators for free.”

What is Stargaze?

Stargaze is a novel Space Situational Awareness (SSA) system, aiming to maximize safety for all satellites, provide precise positional awareness of objects in Earth orbit, and improve space safety amid rising satellite congestion, collision and space debris concerns.

Moreover, SpaceX will make Stargaze conjunction data available to all operators, free of charge.

SpaceX’s new approach signals towards rising industry concerns driven by unsafe practices, including uncoordinated satellite manoeuvres, discarded rocket bodies, and anti-satellite weapons tests.

According to the US-based Slingshot Aerospace’s data, more than 14,000 satellites including some 3500 inactive are orbiting the low Earth orbit.

Consequently, low Earth orbit is increasingly becoming unsafe due to rapid increase in satellites and space junk.

“This [system] will greatly reduce the probability of collisions that create orbital debris (space junk) hazards,” Musk said.

Stargaze, unlike traditional ground-based radar systems, leverages nearly 30,000 embedded star trackers to deliver continuous and multi-angle detection of orbital assets and debris.

Starlink wrote in a statement on X, “By providing this ephemeris sharing and conjunction screening service free of charge, we hope to motivate operators to take similar steps towards ephemeris sharing and safe flight.”