ARLA/CLUSTER: FCC acusa o início do lançamento furtivo de satélites por diversos países e entidades

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

FCC accuses stealthy startup of launching rogue satellites*The U.S.
communications agency says tiny Internet of Things satellites from Swarm
Technologies could endanger other spacecraft*

On 12 January, a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket blasted off
from India’s eastern coast. While its primary cargo was a large Indian
mapping satellite, dozens of secondary CubeSats from other countries
travelled along with it. Seattle-based Planetary Resources supplied a
spacecraft that will test prospecting tools for future asteroid miners,
Canadian company Telesat launched a broadband communications satellite, and
a British Earth-observation mission called Carbonite will capture
high-definition video of the planet’s surface.

Also on board were four small satellites that probably should not have been
there. SpaceBee-1, 2, 3, and 4 were briefly described by the Indian space
agency ISRO as “two-way satellite communications and data relay
<https://www.isro.gov.in/sites/default/files/flipping_book/PSLV-C40_Cartosat2SeriesMission/files/assets/common/downloads/PSLV-C40%20-%20Cartosat%202%20Series%20Mission.pdf>�
devices from the United States. No operator was specified, and only ISRO
publicly noted that they successfully reached orbit the same day.

*IEEE Spectrum* can reveal that the SpaceBees are almost certainly the
first spacecraft from a Silicon Valley startup called Swarm Technologies,
currently still in stealth mode. Swarm was founded in 2016 by one engineer
who developed a spacecraft concept for Google and another who sold his
previous company to Apple. The SpaceBees were built as technology
demonstrators for a new space-based Internet of Things communications
network.

Swarm believes its network could enable satellite communications for orders
of magnitude less cost than existing options. It envisages the worldwide
tracking of ships and cars, new agricultural technologies, and low cost
connectivity for humanitarian efforts anywhere in the world. The four
SpaceBees would be the first practical demonstration of Swarm’s prototype
hardware and cutting-edge algorithms, swapping data with ground stations
for up to eight years.

The only problem is, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had dismissed
Swarm’s application <https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.html?id=203152&x=.> for
its experimental satellites a month earlier, on safety grounds. The FCC is
responsible for regulating commercial satellites, including minimizing the
chance of accidents in space. It feared that the four SpaceBees now
orbiting the Earth would pose an unacceptable collision risk for other
spacecraft.

If confirmed, this would be the first ever unauthorized launch of
commercial satellites.

Read the full *IEEE Spectrum* article:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/satellites/fcc-accuses-stealthy-startup-of-launching-rogue-satellites
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