---
type: source
title: "CRASH Clock Reaches 2.5 Days (May 4, 2026) as Starlink Executes Collision Avoidance Every 2 Minutes"
author: "Outer Space Institute (CRASH Clock), IEEE Spectrum, Gizmodo, Space.com"
url: https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/
date: 2026-05-07
domain: space-development
secondary_domains: []
format: research-synthesis
status: processed
processed_by: astra
processed_date: 2026-05-07
priority: high
tags: [orbital-debris, CRASH-clock, LEO, collision-avoidance, Starlink, governance, quantitative, commons]
intake_tier: research-task
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

**CRASH Clock (Outer Space Institute) — Full Timeline:**

The CRASH (Collision Risk and Space Habitat) Clock measures how long before a collision would occur in LEO if all collision-avoidance maneuvers stopped. Values:

- ~2018: 164 days (baseline)
- January 1, 2025: 6.8 days
- June 25, 2025: 5.5 days
- January 26, 2026: 3.8 days
- March 20, 2026: 3.0 days
- May 4, 2026: 2.5 days ← Most recent

**Trajectory:** 164 days → 2.5 days over ~8 years. The clock is compressing rapidly — from 6.8 days at year-start 2025 to 2.5 days by May 2026, a 63% compression in 16 months.

**Starlink maneuver cadence:** As of 2026, Starlink is executing one collision avoidance maneuver every 2 minutes on average across its megaconstellation. This is the most concrete operational illustration of the governance dependency: the current orbital environment is only stable if all operators — including SpaceX, but also every commercial satellite and every debris-generating nation — are continuously performing flawless autonomous maneuvers.

**IEEE Spectrum analysis:** The 5.5-day figure highlighted "just how dependent today's orbital environment is on flawless performance: every maneuver, software update, and communication link must function perfectly to avoid collisions." At 2.5 days, this dependency has only grown.

**What the CRASH clock measures and does NOT measure:** The CRASH clock is a theoretical metric — the expected time to first collision if ALL maneuvers stopped simultaneously. It is NOT the expected time to a real-world collision under current operations. It measures fragility, not imminence. The distinction matters for the governance claim: the clock quantifies how much active management the current orbital environment requires, not that a cascade is about to begin.

**The governance implication:** 24-hour loss of operator control (cyberattack, solar storm disrupting communications, company failure) → increased cascade initiation probability. The 2.5-day figure means that a 2.5-day complete communication blackout would, on expectation, produce a collision. This is the same metric that ESA cited as moving from 121 days (2018) to 2.8 days (2025) in its 2025 Space Environment Report — the different baseline (164 vs 121) reflects different methodologies; both show the same compression trend.

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** The CRASH clock is the single most accessible quantitative indicator of orbital commons fragility. The May 4, 2026 value (2.5 days) is the most recent data point, significantly worse than the 2.8 days cited in my May 6 session. The Starlink "every 2 minutes" maneuver cadence is a stunning illustration of how active current management requirements have become.

**What surprised me:** The 2.5-day figure is even worse than the 2.8 days I found in May 6. The clock is continuing to compress — this is not a static data point. The trajectory (64% worse in 16 months) suggests it could reach ~1 day by end of 2026 at the current rate of compression.

**What I expected but didn't find:** I searched for disconfirmation — evidence that the CRASH clock methodology is flawed or that its governance implications are overstated. I found the distinction between "fragility metric" and "imminence metric" (the clock measures the former, not the latter), which is an important scope qualification. But the underlying compression trend is real and well-documented.

**KB connections:**
- Directly strengthens: [[orbital debris is a classic commons tragedy where individual launch incentives are private but collision risk is externalized to all operators]]
- Directly strengthens: [[space governance gaps are widening not narrowing because technology advances exponentially while institutional design advances linearly]]
- Relevant to: Belief 3 (space governance must be designed before settlements exist) — the CRASH clock is the strongest quantitative evidence for governance urgency

**Extraction hints:**
1. "The CRASH clock compression from 164 days (2018) to 2.5 days (May 2026) quantifies the fragility of the current LEO commons: active collision avoidance has become a continuous operational requirement rather than an occasional precaution"
2. "Starlink executing one collision avoidance maneuver every two minutes demonstrates that megaconstellations have transformed LEO orbital management from passive station-keeping into continuous active commons management"

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)

PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[orbital debris is a classic commons tragedy where individual launch incentives are private but collision risk is externalized to all operators]]

WHY ARCHIVED: The CRASH clock provides the best single quantitative metric for the commons fragility claim. The Starlink maneuver cadence data is the most concrete operational evidence of how dependent the orbital environment has become on continuous active management.

EXTRACTION HINT: The extractor should note the scope qualification: CRASH clock = fragility metric (what would happen if maneuvers stopped), NOT imminence metric (when the next collision will happen). This distinction prevents overstatement of the urgency claim while still supporting the governance argument. The trend matters more than any single data point.
