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NASA’s four-satellite Starling swarm was not designed for space domain awareness. The 14-kilogram cubesats were equipped with hardware and software to observe their relative positions, coordinate maneuvers and monitor Earth’s ionosphere.
But it became apparent soon after the swarm launched in July 2023 on a Rocket Lab Electron that the cubesat’s onboard cameras were spotting satellites beyond the swarm.
As a result, engineers quickly developed algorithms to maximize Starling’s ability to track other satellites and space debris.
“As a matter of fact, our determination of the positional accuracy of those objects was better than the catalogs,” Roger Hunter, who manages NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology Program, said in a recent interview. “It is a dramatic opportunity for us to do a better job of space tracking, merging the observations from a system like Starling with what comes from the [U.S. Space Force] 18th and 19th Space Defense Squadrons and LeoLabs.”
Starling’s success does not rest on a single technological breakthrough but on a series of innovations in mesh networking, independent decision-making and vision-based navigation. Taken together, the technologies could someday help a swarm of dozens of satellites provide position, navigation and timing services at the moon.
In the near term, Starling’s mission is continuing to evolve. Since the original mission wrapped up in May 2024, NASA and partners, including Blue Canyon Technologies, CesiumAstro, Emergent Space Technologies, L3Harris Technologies and Stanford University’s Space Rendezvous Laboratory, have pushed the envelope of satellite autonomy through the extended mission, Starling 1.5, which is now scheduled to conclude in December 2026.
In early 2025, Starling managers updated satellite software to enhance the swarm’s ability to share responsibilities and make decisions. They also tested strategies for preventing conjunctions among autonomously maneuvering satellites.
SpaceX worked with NASA to design a conjunction-screening tool that allows satellite operators to submit trajectories, receive conjunction updates and notify parties of their intent to maneuver. Then, Starling autonomously planned and executed maneuvers to steer clear of Starlink broadband satellites.
It was “the first demonstration of a collaborative space traffic management system between two different types of spacecraft,” Hunter said. That’s important because traffic in low Earth orbit is picking up, and many new satellites are designed for autonomous maneuvering.
In addition, Starling satellites have shown they can react to scientific phenomena with minimal input from operators on the ground. GPS receivers on Starling cubesats detect charged particles, which prompts the swarm to modify cubesat orbits to study regions of particularly high or low ionospheric density.
“The spacecraft can detect something, talk with each other and decide how to collect information,” Hunter said. “This is why Starling is important. It allows us to finally start making ourselves more independent of control centers.”
This article first appeared in the December 2025 issue of SpaceNews Magazine.
