Starling Mission
The 
Starling swarm consists of 4 x 6U propulsive CubeSats in LEO, launched in July 2023. The StarFOX (2023-24), StarFOX+ (2025), Inspector (2025-26), and FALCON (2026) experiments perform autonomous navigation, control, and space domain awareness.
Swarm Coordination
Track real-time orbital flight operations and attitude telemetry of the Starling swarm. Explore constellation dynamics and autonomous navigation experiments conducted in low Earth orbit.
Watch Realtime
Special thanks to NASA Ames Research Center and the NASA Starling Swarm Mission team for providing the orbital telemetry visualization and data.
EXPERIMENT 01
Autonomous Relative Orbit Determination
Experiment 1 (2024): Relative orbit determination for a persistent target, without prior knowledge of its orbit. A kinematic algorithm independently tracks new targets in images, and batches of bearing angles are used to initialize a relative orbit estimate onboard. Target relative orbit estimates are refined in a sequential filter with steady-state position errors of <0.5% of target range.
EXPERIMENT 02
Autonomous Absolute Orbit Determination
Experiment 2 (2024): Absolute orbit determination for a spacecraft swarm, using only inter-satellite bearing angles shared over a crosslink. Multi-observer measurements are seamlessly fused onboard to provide sufficient observability for autonomous maintenance of the swarm’s absolute orbit estimate, without GNSS.
EXPERIMENT 03
Autonomous RSO Identification & Tracking
Experiment 3 (2025): Identification and tracking of transient resident space objects (RSOs) in the field of view (FOV). An uplinked RSO catalog is used to identify RSOs in images and match them to identities in the Space-Track database. Residuals between optical measurements of RSOs and their reference positions available from ground products are primarily <100 m. Thousands of RSOs have been identified on board.
EXPERIMENT 04
Multi-Observer Orbit Initialization
Experiment 4 (2025): Fast initial orbit determination for unknown targets. Two observers track a common target for ~20 minutes, and measurements are shared between observers over the crosslink. An orbit initialization is computed for the target object. Orbit initialization errors were <10% of target range.
EXPERIMENT 05
Autonomous Tip-and-Cue (Persistent)
Experiment 5 (2025): Tip-and-cue for optical tracking of RSOs. Target state information is used on board to plan attitude changes which center the target in the FOV. For a particular swarm target with relative motion outside of the nominal observer FOV, hundreds of measurements were collected over a 1-day period, enabling consistent observation.
EXPERIMENT 06
Autonomous Tip-and-Cue (Opportunistic)
Experiment 6 (2025): Tip-and-cue for optical tracking of RSOs. A list of RSOs to observe is provided to the satellite, which autonomously chooses an optimal target at each image epoch. The attitude of the camera is controlled online to ensure the target of interest is successfully imaged in the presence of other RSOs, maximizing field of regard. Measurements of more than 50 distinct targets of interest were collected over 1 day.
EXPERIMENT 07
Alternative Optical Positioning (LEO)
Experiment 7 (2026): In-orbit demonstration of alternative PNT in LEO, independent from GPS/GNSS. Resident space objects are detected and identified in images using an RSO catalog, and are leveraged as passive optical beacons to estimate the position of the host satellite in real time. Mean positioning errors are less than 100 m.
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