Thousands of satellites share the space above your head. Every single day, some of them pass uncomfortably close to one another. dodge is a simple, free program for Windows that shows you a clear daily screen of every close approach between a Starlink satellite and anything else in low Earth orbit. No accounts, no subscriptions, no programming knowledge required.
Visit this link to download the application. Everything runs on your own computer using public data.
Satellites do not drive on roads. They travel at roughly 27,000 kilometres per hour, and a collision at that speed is catastrophic. Space agencies call a near miss a "close approach" or a "conjunction". dodge looks at the orbital data published openly by satellite tracking services, calculates where every object will be, and highlights the moments when two objects come too close for comfort.
The difference with dodge is that it focuses on one question: who is making the other object dodge? The project name says it plainly. When a Starlink satellite approaches a piece of debris, a defunct rocket body, or another company's spacecraft, one of them usually has to move. dodge gives you a daily screen of those events, attributed, so you can see exactly which objects were involved and how close they came.
Every screen the tool produces is signed and verifiable. That means you are not asked to simply trust a screenshot. The daily output carries a cryptographic signature that anyone can check, so the record is provable rather than just claimed.
You do not need to install Python, set up a developer environment, or understand orbital mechanics. The steps below are the whole process.
All releases live in one place. Visit this link to download the application:
Keep dodge in a normal folder that you can find again, such as your Documents folder or a folder on your desktop. Avoid running it from inside a compressed archive, because it needs to write its daily report files next to itself.
On first launch, dodge will ask for nothing at all. It does not need an account, an email address, or a payment method. It reads public orbital data and prepares your screen.
The daily screen is the heart of the program. It is organised so that a complete beginner can understand it in a few seconds:
You can save the day's screen, share it, or simply leave it running on a second monitor. It refreshes on its own schedule and keeps the previous days available so you can compare.
Space traffic claims are only useful if you can check them. dodge signs its daily output so that any reader can confirm the screen was produced by the tool and has not been altered afterwards. The build process itself is hardened and reproducible, which is a formal way of saying that you can trace how the program was made.
The source data is public. The calculations use SGP4, the standard mathematical model for predicting where a satellite will be. Nothing is hidden behind a licence, a login, or a paywall. If a number appears on your screen, you can trace it back to its origin.
Satellite tracking services publish a small file for each object describing its orbit. Think of it as a bus timetable for something moving far faster than a bus. dodge reads those timetables, runs the standard prediction maths, and compares the paths of thousands of objects over the coming day.
Where two paths come within a set safety distance, dodge records an event. It then looks up who owns each object and adds that label. The result is a ranked list of the day's closest calls, each one sourced, each one checkable.
Is it really free? Yes. There is no paid tier.
Do I need a fast internet connection? No. The daily data files are small, and dodge works fine on a slow home connection.
Does it control any satellite? No. dodge is a viewer. It never sends commands anywhere. It simply shows you what the public data says.
Will it run on an older laptop? Yes. It is a lightweight program and does not stress the machine.
Can I use the output elsewhere? Yes. The daily screens and their signatures are yours to keep, quote, or republish.
The most common hiccup is a download that stops halfway. Delete the partial file and fetch it again from the release page. The second most common is Windows blocking a freshly downloaded program; the "More info" then "Run anyway" route clears that in seconds.
If the list of close approaches is empty, check that the first data refresh has finished. It can take a short while on the very first run. After that, dodge keeps itself up to date in the background.
Close approach. Two objects passing near each other in orbit.
Orbital debris. Dead satellites, spent rocket parts, and fragments left behind in space.
Low Earth orbit. The busy band of space a few hundred kilometres above the ground.
SGP4. The standard formula used to predict a satellite's position from its published orbit data.
Signature. A mathematical stamp that proves a file came from where it claims to come from.