NASA’s Starling Satellites Will Work With SpaceX Starlink To Test Collision Avoidance

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to launch a batch of cube satellites to test whether they can work autonomously in space. The project, dubbed as 'Starling', seeks to test whether satellites are capable of working with each other in space without any input from operators on the ground. Through these satellites, the space agency will develop technologies that it hopes will help in deep space exploration missions where communication with Earth often takes quite a long time. The satellites will operate in low Earth orbit (LEO), observing the upper part of the Earth's atmosphere and working together to analyze scientific data and autonomously react to any anomalies.

The Starling project will be made of four small cube satellites, which are slated to be launched later this month. It is being developed by NASA's Ames Research Center, and after launch, the satellites will fly 355 miles above Earth and at a distance of 40 miles from each other. The program will test whether satellites can autonomously communicate with each other, keep note of each other's positions, adapt their positioning based on sensory data gathered by one of the spacecraft and conduct maneuvers on their own to stay in formation.

For the maneuvering, the spacecraft will use NASA's ROMEO (Reconfiguration and Orbit Maintenance Experiments Onboard) software which will allow the Starling spacecraft to plan their trajectories and make the required adjustments. The communications bit will be made up a of Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) network that uses radios on each satellite to determine when they