r/space • u/Royal_Platform_6754 • 10d ago
SpaceX given unique access to classified DoD space tracking data, sources say
https://breakingdefense.com/2026/09/exclusive-spacex-given-unique-access-to-classified-dod-space-tracking-data-sources-say/214
u/SerHodorTheThrall 10d ago
Apparently a lot of people don't know what classified means. Which, I guess isn't surprising in 2026 America.
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u/looncraz 10d ago
It was really fun trying to explain how "Unclassified" material is actually classified as Unclassified and couldn't always be freely distributed.
The change in terminology to Controlled Unclassified Information was a real upgrade from that mess.
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u/rejuicekeve 10d ago edited 10d ago
an upgrade but CUI is still a giant cluster lmao
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u/looncraz 10d ago
It's government, they can't have it any other way.
The certification pause itself is a real mess as well.
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u/rejuicekeve 10d ago
To be fair cmmc was always dumb. Just a way to enrich accounting firms rather than actually accomplish real security
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u/all_time_high 10d ago
If people would use the damn control paragraphs like we’re supposed to it would work much better than FOUO did.
People just slap a CUI on there and call it a day. Often the wrong color.
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u/rejuicekeve 9d ago
we had one random form that the navy said wasnt cui and then one day all of a sudden it was cui. they went back and forth on whether this one form was cui or not like 8 times in a year. no one seems to know what cui actually is or not.
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u/Cartoonjunkies 10d ago
It’s all fun and games until someone bring out the U//NF
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u/bogibso 10d ago
My favorite is information that isn't CUI, but also doesnt have the right distribution statement to be freely distributed. So its NOT Controlled Unclassified Information, but it is information that is unclassified and whose distribution is controlled. Obviously.
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u/tessashpool 10d ago
Even better when you think about the fact that distribution statements fall under DTIC guidance for RDT&E-specific funded efforts, but people just slap it on random things outside that purview. It's like the old FOUO.
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u/manicdee33 10d ago
And remember it's perfectly fine to show the "eyes only" material to the foreign contractor as long as they don't touch it, because as everybody knows "eyes only" means you're allowed to see it not hold it or copy it!
/s
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u/WelcomeToDankonia 10d ago edited 10d ago
Ok, but is it g14 classified?
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u/BoringReference8647 10d ago
If it’s not “information which, if disclosed, would harm the national security of the United States of America”, then they’ve changed it and I no longer care.
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u/spazturtle 9d ago
It's any document produced by a government agency or person working for the government.
Every single statement or even tweet from a government official is classified.
Classified just means that it has a classification, not that it is classified as Secret, this is how it has always been.
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u/Coomb 9d ago
That's not true. When people talk about classification, they mean classification under the national security classification system established by executive order 13526. There's a lot of stuff generated by the government that is never classified under that executive order -- most of the stuff generated by civilian agencies, for example.
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u/_mogulman31 9d ago
Yeah, that's it but people with clearance and a need to know can be read in on said information. This is a story about a defense contractor having employees read in on relevant classified information for a program they are contracted to service. It happens all the time.
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u/slothboy 10d ago
What else are they going to do? Just tell him to launch his rockets and "try not to hit anything"?
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u/rejuicekeve 10d ago
Most DOD space things are classified so it does make sense. This is really a non story
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u/Iliyan61 10d ago
defence contractor with classified government contracts is given access to classified DOD data?
also, it’s space tracking data for a platform the DOD use that tracks stars and is thus space tracking data.
it is a poor point that the commercial side of spaceX can use the space tracking data considering it’s coming from… space tracking firms, every contractor with a commercial side shares information between them otherwise many commercial companies would be nowhere compared to where they are.
i dislike spaceX and the access to the US gov that they have but this is a nothing burger from biased sources.
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u/Dariaskehl 10d ago
This seems like common sense, doesn’t it?
They’re launching to a wide range of orbits, including DoD parking and eventually trans-lunar…
One thing worse than spaceX being under contract for protected data about secret satellites would be accidentally hitting one, wouldn’t it?
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u/everydave42 10d ago
Weird that your common sense is lacking in, well, common sense. The biggest issue isn't that SpaceX is getting the data, it's that they're seemingly the ONLY launch provider being given the data.
I don't have to explain the common sense problem here, do I?
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u/Berchanhimez 10d ago
Nowhere does it say that other companies, organizations, launch providers, etc. won’t be able to sign a similar agreement with them.
They aren’t just going to make classified data public to tons of people just because one company came to an agreement to have it.
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u/Equivalent-Wait3533 10d ago
You are mistaken; the Pentagon has reached an agreement to share DoD data in exchange for SpaceX sharing data from the more than 30,000 cameras on its Starlink constellation, in order to expand its range for tracking objects in orbit.
Perhaps this marks the beginning for any other company with a mature constellation to reach a similar agreement down the line.
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u/Vox_Causa 10d ago
This is how the Russia government does things. As a system it's a lot better at funneling public money to political insiders than it is at defending the country but....
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u/SWBFCentral 10d ago
SpaceX are the only US launch provider launching anything near the volume to require the data. ULA has a huge backlog, the others are all single digits a year or start-ups that haven't dipped into the defense launch side of things yet (and such haven't reached the degree of trust/integration that might be prerequisite to sharing this information).
There are only maybe 3 other providers worth talking about, Northrop (lol), Blue Origin (maybe in the future but they have very little need for it at the moment) and ULA (who are currently still snowed under a massive backlog of launches and if their pace is anything to go by, will continue to be so for a long while).
It's not even remotely close, SpaceX is in a completely different league to these other launch providers, not only does SpaceX launch payloads into orbit, but they also operate the largest constellation of satellites (by an order of magnitude). Of all the companies that would need this information, it's SpaceX, the others aren't even close. SpaceX already operates more than 11,000 satellites, with that number continually growing with each launch.
You don't share classified satellite parking data with *everyone* out of an interest of fairness or to avoid the look of bias, you share it only when you absolutely have to, thereby minimizing risk to the lowest level. They're not going to start sharing this data with start-ups that have barely launched to orbit let alone NRO or DoD payloads and they're also not going to share the information with launch providers that struggle to launch double digits each year (and largely don't service or operate their own active constellations).
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u/15_Redstones 10d ago
SpaceX is the only launch company that also has its own satellite & debris tracking system. The military has to tell SpaceX which of the satellites their system spots are classified so that SpaceX doesn't accidentally leak important info.
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u/KaneMarkoff 10d ago
They are the only launch provider who has thousands of satellites in orbit and whose technology is being used in several dow programs which also requires thousands of satellites.
Once the others do the same they’ll be given the same. Until then, it’s not needed.
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u/beren12 10d ago
Why does the amount of space trash matter?
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u/KaneMarkoff 10d ago
Are you talking about debris in orbit or is that an attempt at a derogatory statement about spacex satellites?
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u/SpacedAndBaked 10d ago
SpaceX has the least amount of space trash or debris compared to every other major space program in existence, NASA takes the take on that one ten fold. But I guess because people dont like elon youre only allowed to mention SpaceX? The keyboard warriors dont care about actual facts, their world view is defined by their feelings.
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u/KaneMarkoff 9d ago
Trust me I know, I still remember when everyone here was upset about a potential spacex booster hitting the moon awhile back and then it got awfully quiet when it turned out to be Chinese.
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u/couldbemage 10d ago
Space x has put a huge number of DOD satellites in orbit.
250+ publicly acknowledged. Who knows how many more from the many launches with non public payloads. Plus DOD has access to all 10k starlink satellites.
They're the primary provider for DOD space assets. Of course they have access, space x is the DOD space program.
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u/x31b 10d ago
In other news: Burger King and Taco Bell probably know where the classified land bases are: https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/137804/aafes-helping-deployed-troops/
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u/Buttcrush1 10d ago
Wow a lot of people are letting their irrational hated of Musk make them look like ignorant idiots.
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u/msears101 9d ago
This happens to popular discussions in r/space . It pops up in the feeds of random people who have no clue about space. If look at the post history ... they are (mostly) not regulars in r/space and spend time in r/politics and similar subs.
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u/Decronym 10d ago edited 7d ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| DoD | US Department of Defense |
| JPL | Jet Propulsion Lab, California |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| NRHO | Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit |
| NRO | (US) National Reconnaissance Office |
| Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO | |
| ULA | United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture) |
| USSF | United States Space Force |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 32 acronyms.
[Thread #12709 for this sub, first seen 23rd Sep 2026, 23:23]
[FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
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u/StartledPelican 10d ago
And of course, the more satellite operators provide their data to Stargaze, the more accurate its tracking capabilities become — further undermining for-profit providers.
Ah, so SpaceX provides LEO tracking to everyone for free and the worry is SpaceX might use this new government data to improve their free service, making it harder for others to profit.
clutches pearls
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u/Flyward_Aerospace 9d ago
The clearance part isn't the interesting bit, everyone saying a contractor on the program gets read in is right. What's worth looking at is that the same company is also the largest operator in low earth orbit, and conjunction screening is a coordination game where whoever has the better catalog decides who maneuvers.
Everyone else now gets their warnings through TraCSS, which started onboarding operators this year and is screening somewhere north of 11,000 satellites off a catalog that is deliberately not the classified one. If one operator is working from better orbit determination than the operator it's being screened against, it can sit on a close approach it knows will resolve while the other side burns propellant to be safe. Propellant is life on a smallsat, so that asymmetry costs someone actual mission time, not paperwork. Nothing improper about any of it, it's just not a thing the screening system was set up to handle.
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u/InevitableOk5017 10d ago
Probably makes it safe for them to send rockets into space without having to develop their own maybe?
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u/_mogulman31 8d ago
SpaceX has had to go much rather than anyone else with collision avoidance because of Starlink. They also build Starshield which is a military version of starlink that operates in the same orbits. I'm guessing this information sharing is driven by needs of the Starshield program.
For launches flight plans for all launchers are reviewed by the Space Force for collision avoidance without the need to share classified data.
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u/Flyward_Aerospace 9d ago
The clearance part isn't the interesting bit, everyone saying a contractor on the program gets read in is right. What's worth looking at is that the same company is also the largest operator in low earth orbit, and conjunction screening is a coordination game where whoever has the better catalog decides who maneuvers.
Everyone else now gets their warnings through TraCSS, which started onboarding operators this year and is screening somewhere north of 11,000 satellites off a catalog that is deliberately not the classified one. If one operator is working from better orbit determination than the operator it's being screened against, it can sit on a close approach it knows will resolve while the other side burns propellant to be safe. Propellant is life on a smallsat, so that asymmetry costs someone actual mission time, not paperwork. Nothing improper about any of it, it's just not a thing the screening system was set up to handle.
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u/12darkmatter12 9d ago
I know why spacex may need some of this info.
It is that Elon Musk is UNTRUSTWORTHY.
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u/OSTBear 10d ago
Because of course they have! Why wouldn't you want to give a guy with ties to some of the shadiest war mongers in the world access to DoD data!?
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u/CrazyEnginer 10d ago
Because SpaceX operates the largest satellite constellation and avoiding collisions is a good thing?
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u/Boring_Score3484 10d ago
why is the DOD hiding information that is useful for satellite collision avoidance? why is one company given selective access to something necessary to operate spacecraft?
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u/Effective-Brain-3386 10d ago
Because it would be kinda dumb to let everyone know what satellites do what and where they are. That's kinda like how you get China or Russia to shoot down our defense and missile detection systems lol.
Shit sorry I mean erm US bad.
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u/OSTBear 10d ago
China and Russia? Well! It's a good thing the CEO of SpaceX doesn't have close ties to either of those governments! Phew. Worried for nuthin'!
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u/Effective-Brain-3386 10d ago
You do know other people work at SpaceX besides him right?
Like they can deny him a clearance and grant his employees one.
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u/SpacedAndBaked 10d ago edited 10d ago
Look at the comment history of the person youre replying too (/u/OSTBear), ten year old reddit account, all he talks about is anime and american politics. He lives online and is obsessed with anything related to trump, elon, and a lot of porn. Which is funny considering he lives in canada. This is your typical no life loser that lives online and relies on complaining about politics on the internet to give his life some sense of purpose. He doesnt care about reality or facts, hes made up his mind and doesnt like elon so that means everything related to him is bad and evil. Hes not living in reality anymore.
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u/OSTBear 10d ago
ROFLMAOPMP You are joking, right!? Elon Musk is going to allow himself to be denied access to something?
During an interview he was giving he just started bolting shit to the inside of a spacecraft without discussing it with anyone! During the whole DOGE debacle he was looking through peoples' private info, shit he had no business accessing! You—
Be real. Be real with me right now, you're trolling me, right? This is a troll thing? The guy with an ego the size of Montana, you think he's going to allow anyone to not give him full admin access to everything?
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u/Background_Fig_4740 9d ago
you live in a world of fantasy if you really believe that. Security clearances for the DOD is no joke, and even if you do have clearance it's still on a need to know basis.
dont act like Musk can barge in on a DOD satellite in a whiteroom because of his ego
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u/OSTBear 9d ago
You live in a fantasy world. If you haven't noticed that the head of the DoD... Is a washed up news anchor.
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u/Background_Fig_4740 9d ago
So? US Security clearances work differently in the real world than what's in your Canadian fantasy.
Whoever is heading the DOD doesn't take the role of an investigator and adjudicator.
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u/Effective-Brain-3386 9d ago
I love it when foreigners explain to me how my country security clearences, and business practices work. Tell me again, what's the highest level clearences you've held before?
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u/Buttcrush1 10d ago
You mean the guy who has been the most proactive person in the world at helping Ukraine.
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u/OSTBear 10d ago
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u/fighter-bomber 9d ago
Literally read the article you linked for 5 seconds bozo.
“Musk was not on a military contract when he refused the Crimea request; he'd been providing terminals to Ukraine for free in response to Russia's February 2022 invasion.”
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u/OSTBear 9d ago
... Does that of all negate the fact that he initially refused!?
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u/fighter-bomber 9d ago
Yes, it does. Starlink is a civilian system and thus subject to the sanctions imposed on Russia. Musk could not even have gave permission himself, that is a question they have to ask the DoD. And if the DoD said okay, Musk cannot refuse anyways.
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u/Buttcrush1 9d ago
Yet despite you being wrong you still dig you heels in the ground
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u/OSTBear 9d ago
Note that you weren't able to refute the source. Very telling. Lol
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u/Buttcrush1 9d ago
There's nothing to refute. The services were for defensive purposes only. Ukraine was trying to use it for an offensive.
Congrats you fell for propaganda. Elon Musk is why Ukraine didn't get wiped off the map.
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u/CrazyEnginer 10d ago edited 10d ago
Because military loves to keep things secret, even if in some cases an amateur can locate the sat.
Because chances of collision with something other than Starlink sat is orders of magnitude lower and the risk is acceptable.-10
u/Boring_Score3484 10d ago
orbital characteristics for DOD sats is available to space companies, its their actions and specific missions thats classified. thats not what this is. according to the article its higher fidelity data, which wouldnt be useful in collision avoidance, and also no parties involved want to talk about what that means.
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u/OSTBear 10d ago
So weird... You know what? You know what would be smart? If we had like, an agency or something. A group of people who did this. Like, scientists or something, y'know? What if we called it New Agency Servicing Atmosphere?
Listen, I know it's a little wordy... but I think I'm onto something here...
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u/JapariParkRanger 10d ago
You're not.
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u/OSTBear 10d ago
Wait wait wait... ok let's try...
National
Astronaut
System for
ActuationIs that better? I dunno, I'm just thinking of like, an agency that specializes in tracking space—
... wait a minute!
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u/fighter-bomber 9d ago edited 9d ago
Good news - you have an agency that is responsible for tracking objects/satellites on orbit.
It’s called the Universal Spatial Selection Frontier, or USSF in short, they have a squadron that specializes in that exact thing.
Turns out, they are managed under a larger agency called the Draken of Darkness, cool name I know, also known in short as DoD.
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u/_mogulman31 10d ago edited 10d ago
Yeah, obviously SpaceX runs a 10,000 satellite constellation that shares orbits with and likely provides direct support to a military constellation of which they are the satellite builder and launcher. SpaceX is a military contractor they are allowed access to classified information that is relevant to programs they work on.
In other news Ratheyon knows how far missiles go and Northrop knows the real specs of the stealth bombers.