![\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/9deda5a8cc65e2bcfd6e12a048052d66.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\nWhen you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
An artist’s concept depicting the near-Earth orbital debris field, based on real data from the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office. | Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center<\/p>\n
China recently reached out to NASA over a maneuver to prevent a possible collision between satellites, a space sustainability official said, marking a first for space traffic management.<\/p>\n
“For years, if we had a conjunction<\/a>, we would send a note to the Chinese saying, ‘We think we’re going to run into you. You hold still, we’ll maneuver around you,'” Alvin Drew, director for NASA Space Sustainability, said during a plenary session<\/a> at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, Australia, on Oct. 2.<\/p>\n A big shift had come a day earlier, Drew revealed. “Just yesterday, we had a bit of a celebration because, for the first time, the Chinese National Space Agency reached out to us and said, ‘We see a conjunction amongst our satellites. We recommend you hold still. We’ll do the maneuver.’ And that’s the first time that’s ever happened,” Drew said.<\/p>\n The move by the China National Space Administration (CNSA<\/a>) comes as both the United States, notably through SpaceX’s commercial Starlink<\/a> constellation, and China, in the shape of the Guowang<\/a> and Thousand Sails<\/a> megaconstellations, are rapidly increasing the number of satellites they have in orbit. This means an increasing need for satellite operators to coordinate to limit the chances of collisions between satellites and prevent events that cause new clouds of space debris<\/a>.<\/p>\n The development also indirectly suggests that China’s space situational awareness, or understanding what is going on in orbit at any moment, has reached the level of being able to flag conjunctions and begin to coordinate with other operators.<\/p>\n