The US Space Force has granted SpaceX "enhanced" access to the High Accuracy Catalog, the military's most detailed and secure database of orbital objects tracked by ground-based radars, telescopes, and sensors. The data includes Vector Covariance Messages capable of tracking objects down to 10cm — far more precise than SpaceX's own Stargaze system, which can only resolve objects about half a meter in size. No other commercial company has received this level of access. The timing is the tell. The Trump administration's Doge initiative fired staff from Traccs, the federal space traffic coordination program created during Trump's first term specifically to take over commercial space traffic management from the military. The administration then tried to defund Traccs' $65 million budget to near zero in both fiscal year 2026 and 2027. Congress re-inserted the funding both times, but the program remains hobbled and understaffed. The commercial US space market is projected to reach nearly $2 trillion over the next decade, and SpaceX already operates approximately 11,000 Starlink satellites with plans to scale to 20,000. Traccs manages thousands of satellites, debris, and spacecraft, helping prevent up to 50,000 near-collisions daily. Whoever controls the traffic data controls the rules of engagement for every operator in orbit. The exchange is nominally reciprocal — the government gets access to Stargaze cameras and sensors in return. But the asymmetry is structural. SpaceX supplements a consumer-grade system with military-grade data, while the government gets a supplement to a system it already operates. More critically, the VCM data is designated "controlled unclassified information" and has been closely held because it could expose the limits of US defense capabilities and enable reverse engineering of satellite sensors used to monitor other nations' defense satellites. Industry observers describe the scenario as "vendor lock" — a dynamic in which SpaceX's technological dominance and political access make the government progressively more dependent. Cole Donovan, a former Traccs employee now with the Stand Up for Science non-profit, compared it to giving a trucking company control of all the traffic lights. Craig Holman of Public Citizen framed it as a donor extracting returns on political investment. The counterargument has merit but is narrow. A former NOAA official, speaking anonymously, noted SpaceX has been "remarkably responsive to space safety concerns" and stepped into a vacuum the government failed to fill. The failure is real — Traccs has never been fully funded or staffed. But the administration is simultaneously creating the vacuum and rewarding an ally for filling it. The structural question is whether orbital traffic management becomes a public utility or a private monopoly. Every competitor — from European operators to smaller US satellite companies — now faces an adversary that both operates the largest constellation and controls the most accurate collision data. The administration has signaled its preference clearly: defund the public system, arm the private one, and let the market sort it out. The market, in this case, has one dominant player.
