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ESA's Aeolus Earth Observation satellite has launched its thrusters as part of a "collision avoidance maneuver", according to a statement from ESA.
In its initial trajectory, a satellite owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX was part of the company's Starlink system, which aims to set up a constellation of thousands of satellites capable of broadcasting Internet data to the four corners of the Earth.
ESA contacted Starlink, which said it did not intend to move its satellite, the statement said. The ESA team has therefore decided to increase the altitude of its Aeolus satellite in order to avoid a collision.
The maneuver took place around half an orbit before the potential collision, according to ESA.
CNN has contacted SpaceX for a comment.
"It's very rare to perform collision avoidance maneuvers with active satellites," ESA said in a tweet.
"The vast majority of ESA avoidance maneuvers are the result of dead satellites or fragments of previous collisions."
The execution of these maneuvers is long and it will soon become impossible to manually avoid collisions in the space as the number of satellites increases significantly, tweeted the agency.
Starlink alone could involve thousands of satellites, and competing Internet constellations of Amazon and OneWeb are also in preparation.
In response, ESA is working on an artificial intelligence (AI) system to automate the process of avoiding collisions in the space.
"Nobody was at fault here, but this example shows the urgent need for proper management of space traffic, with clear communication protocols and more automation," said Holger Krag, responsible of space security at ESA, in a statement.
"This is how air traffic control has been working for decades and space operators now need to come together to define automated coordination of maneuvers."
The compromise for increased satellite traffic in the space will consist of a low-cost Internet connection for a significant portion of the world's population that is not yet online, according to SpaceX.
However, the launch of the satellite constellation will cost about $ 10 billion and will involve 12 rocket launches to position the satellites, Musk said before the launch of the first Starlink satellite in May.
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