US Military Gives Musk's SpaceX Access to Sensitive Space-Tracking Data, Raising National Security Questions
The US military has given Elon Musk's company SpaceX access to restricted space-tracking data, raising a new round of questions about whether the Trump administration is attempting to hand over traffic control in Earth's orbit to a controversial donor. According to industry observers, the move also raises new national security questions.
The defense department has granted SpaceX access to its most precise data on potential collisions among satellites and other space objects, which will give the company an advantage over competitors that offer a similar service. SpaceX and the US Space Force have signed a new contract on the arrangement.
The move has a contentious backdrop. In 2025, Musk's Doge fired many of the staff of the federal government's nascent space traffic control program, and the administration twice attempted to financially gut the department called the Traffic Coordination System for Space, or Traccs. The moves were widely viewed in the industry as an attempt to privatize space traffic control.
The commercial US space market is expected to grow to a value of nearly $2tn over the next decade. Against that backdrop, the unprecedented access to military data appears to be another step toward Musk asserting monopoly control over commercial space activity more broadly, said Cole Donovan, a former Traccs employee now with the Stand Up for Science non-profit.
"It's making a company the de facto source for space traffic coordination within the US," Donovan said. "It's like giving a trucking company control of all the traffic lights, which they can switch to red whenever it's their competition's turn to go."
Traccs manages thousands of satellites, debris and spacecraft, and helps prevent up to 50,000 near-collisions, called conjunctions, daily. The first Trump administration established Traccs to take over commercial space traffic control from the defense department. But Traccs has never been fully funded or staffed, and has struggled to take root.
The funding fight has repeated itself. In fiscal year 2026 the administration tried to largely defund the $65m program during the budgetary process, but Congress re-inserted the funding. The administration has again proposed slashing the budget to nearly zero in fiscal year 2027, but the House again reinserted the funding.
The Space Force has defended the move. In a statement to Breaking Defense, a spokesperson said the Space Force is engaging with several companies to exchange commercial data sources for access to sections of the controlled, unclassified information, high accuracy catalogue, where it provides benefit to the US government. SpaceX and the Space Force did not respond to requests for comment from the Guardian.
The technical side of the decision matters too. For the first time, the Space Force has given a commercial company "enhanced" access to the US Space Command's most detailed, secure version of its High Accuracy Catalog (Hac) of on-orbit objects. This includes Vector Covariance Messages (VCMs) made up of tracking data collected from military sensors, telescopes and radars on the ground that track the paths of satellites and other space objects in lower orbit down to about 10cm (3.93in) in size.
The military largely uses the radars and data for monitoring other countries' satellite positions, but it is also utilized to track commercial spacecraft and objects to avoid collisions. The latter is part of the responsibility that the military no longer wants, and was supposed to hand off to Traccs, Donovan said. Instead, SpaceX has been given access to the data.
The VCM data is valuable to Starlink because the company uses its own "Stargaze" system to track other satellites and space objects. Stargaze is made up of thousands of cameras and radars mounted on Starlink satellites; it can only see objects down to about a half meter in size, and is not as accurate as the military's system. The military radar data is "an extremely valuable tool to supplement Stargaze," Breaking Defense quoted a SpaceX employee stating during an industry conference. The government is receiving something in return — access to Stargaze cameras and sensors. "The more observations and data that [the military] has, the better," Donovan said.
However, the VCM data is designated as "controlled unclassified information" and has been closely held by the military because it could expose the limits of defense capabilities. The defense department has also wanted to prevent the reverse engineering of satellite sensors it uses to monitor other nations' defense satellites, observers say. Multiple industry observers have said they fear a "vendor lock" scenario in which the government is overly reliant on SpaceX because it is so influential and technologically advanced.
In terms of ethical conflicts, the access is another example of the Trump administration rewarding a donor with business opportunities with the federal government, said Craig Holman, Capitol Hill lobbyist for Public Citizen, a government accountability non-profit. "Elon Musk has bought his way into the favor of President Trump and with it, unlimited riches and lucrative government contracts in the space industry," Holman said. "[His] political investment is paying off very, very handsomely — as was intended."
On the other hand, a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said SpaceX has largely been "remarkably responsive to space safety concerns" and they do not fault Starlink for stepping into a space that the government has failed to adequately address. "My greater disappointment is with the government's failure to fulfil its responsibility to establish a coherent space governance framework that provides guidance, transparency, and a level playing field for all operators," the official said. Musk's growing lower Earth orbit empire includes Starlink, which operates about 11,000 satellites in orbit and could have as many as 20,000 in the coming years.
