Stargaze: SpaceX's Space Situational Awareness System

(starlink.com)

56 points | by hnburnsy 4 hours ago ago

12 comments

  • pjscott 2 hours ago ago

    Honestly, these two paragraphs are one of the most compelling things they could possibly say in a press release:

    > 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.

    > 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.

    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!

  • Hextinium 2 hours ago ago

    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.

    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.

    • reed1234 an hour ago ago

      The Space Force already tracks satellites (and debris). I imagine this is more of an improvement for small debris such as bolts, etc.

      • sfblah 14 minutes ago ago

        It's not.

  • globalnode an hour ago ago

    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.

    • navigate8310 19 minutes ago ago

      Would this sort of operational prowess be possible if it weren't for Musk? Will the future be kind and reflect back in the hindsight when Musk dies?

    • comboy 20 minutes ago ago

      better stay out of biography books

    • alphabetag675 33 minutes ago ago

      I wonder what you have to say about our new generation fertilizers and vaccines.

    • soiax 4 minutes ago ago

      There it is... the usual ELON MUSK BAD.

    • sidcool 28 minutes ago ago

      I was just having this discussion in the other thread where people were blatantly lying about Tesla because they hate Elon Musk. Hate him all you want, but his companies are truly successful.

      • sfblah 16 minutes ago ago

        I was just thinking about that the other day while relaxing in my Hyperloop pod from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I was reminiscing about how I'd avoided all the traffic in LA by using the Boring Company's tunnels in my second-generation Tesla Roadster. I'd been in LA for a conference about the hugely successful Starship space launch system, which has revolutionized cost to orbit with fully reusable second stages. When I got to San Francisco, I hopped in a Tesla fully self-driving robotaxi, and when I got home, my Optimus robot served me tea after I instructed it to do so using my Neuralink probe. I then sent a video voicemail to my parents, who live in a city of 1 million people on Mars, which has recently been terraformed.

  • drivingmenuts 2 hours ago ago

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