Starlink to lower SpaceX satellites as near-misses pile up in low Earth orbit

Low Earth orbit is getting very crowded

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What just happened? There have been plenty of reports in recent times about near-misses of low Earth orbit satellites – most of them belonging to Starlink. In 2026, Elon Musk's company hopes to reduce the number of these incidents by lowering the orbit of its satellite constellation by around 44 miles.

Michael Nicolls, SpaceX's vice president of Starlink engineering, said on Thursday that all SpaceX satellites operating at around 550 kilometers (342 miles) will be reconfigured to a new 480 kilometers (298 mile) orbit across the course of the year.

The announcement comes amid concern over how congested low Earth orbit has become. There are around 13,000 satellites in this zone, almost four times more than the 3,400 spacecraft that were there in 2020. Around 10,000 of these satellites belong to SpaceX, used for its broadband internet network.

The congestion issue was highlighted last month when one of the nine satellites deployed from a Chinese rocket missed a SpaceX satellite by just 656 feet. The incident led to Nicholls calling for increased coordination between satellite operators.

Just a few days later, Starlink revealed that one of its satellites had experienced a sudden loss of communications, a drop in altitude, venting of the propulsion tank, and the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects.

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The satellite fell four kilometers (2.4 miles) from its 418 km (260 miles) altitude, suggesting the anomaly was a result of an internal explosion rather than a collision.

"Lowering the satellites results in condensing Starlink orbits, and will increase space safety in several ways," Nicolls said in a post on X. "The number of debris objects and planned satellite constellations is significantly lower below 500 km, reducing the aggregate likelihood of collision," he added.

Another benefit of lowering the satellites' altitude is that they will deorbit more quickly at the end of their service life due to increased atmospheric drag, reducing the risk of defunct spacecraft lingering in orbit for decades.

In July, the Office of Space Commerce warned that the plan to slash its FY 2026 budget from $65 million to just $10 million could effectively dismantle the Traffic Coordination System for Space, a critical program designed to prevent satellite collisions in Earth's crowded orbit.