Stargaze: SpaceX's Space Situational Awareness System

by hnburnsy on 1/30/2026, 3:11:43 AM

Comments

by: pjscott

Honestly, these two paragraphs are one of the most compelling things they could possibly say in a press release:<p>> Stargaze already has a proven track record in its utility for space safety. In late 2025, a Starlink satellite encountered a conjunction with a third-party satellite that was performing maneuvers, but whose operator was not sharing ephemeris. Until five hours before the conjunction, the close approach was anticipated to be ~9,000 meters—considered a safe miss-distance with zero probability of collision. With just five hours to go, the third-party satellite performed a maneuver which changed its trajectory and collapsed the anticipated miss distance to just ~60 meters. Stargaze quickly detected this maneuver and published an updated trajectory to the screening platform, generating new CDMs which were immediately distributed to relevant satellites. Ultimately, the Starlink satellite was able to react within an hour of the maneuver being detected, planning an avoidance maneuver to reduce collision risk back down to zero.<p>> With so little time to react, this would not have been possible by relying on legacy radar systems or high-latency conjunction screening processes. If observations of the third-party satellite were less frequent, conjunction screening took longer, or the reaction required human approval, such an event might not have been successfully mitigated.<p>Looks like a non-trivial upgrade to previous systems, and they're making Stargaze's data available to other satellite operators free of charge. Nice!

1/30/2026, 5:53:55 AM

by: Hextinium

Seems like a generally good idea, the satellites already need to use star trackers, they need an almanac of what should be there so deviations need to be tracked.<p>I can entirely see the military perspective though, this is almost a direct challenge for any adversary that any maneuver you perform, we will know about it.

1/30/2026, 5:32:42 AM

by: globalnode

all this tech is nice and dandy n' all but the guy in charge of it is so distasteful that id rather live in a cave with stone tools than rely on any of it.

1/30/2026, 6:38:03 AM

by: drivingmenuts

Who knew that Big Brother would name himself after a 1990s movie about a completely different premise?

1/30/2026, 5:11:23 AM