Swarm Technologies CEO Sara Spangelo was flying high in October 2017—piloting a small plane carrying John Krafcik, the CEO of Waymo, Google’s self-driving car company, and another entrepreneur on a pleasure flight. They passed over Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California. Spangelo joked later on Facebook that Krafcik was “checking out the competition.”
Like Tesla founder Elon Musk, Spangelo’s real interest is in space business, but unlike Musk, her company’s historic first in orbit threatens its very existence. In January 2018, Swarm launched the first satellites into space unauthorized by any government. People familiar with the business of launching satellites into space consider the situation odd, troubling and even dangerous: Access to space is supposed to be expensive, difficult and tightly guarded by nations under international treaty obligations.
How, exactly, did those tiny satellites go from Silicon Valley into a rocket at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the west coast of India, and then to orbit, without anyone asking for its paperwork?
No one at Swarm is talking, and some have hired lawyers. Whether a comedy of errors or a case of corporate line-crossing, the good news is that the experimental satellites were designed with benign intent.
What, some experts warn, if next time it isn’t?
In 2013, Spangelo completed a University of Michigan Ph.D thesis on the potential for satellite networks to carry large amounts of data, then moved to Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), where top space researchers design and execute space missions for NASA. Like many young space scientists, Spangelo next went north to Silicon Valley, taking a job at Google X, the company’s “moonshot factory” that prototypes advanced technology for potential businesses; Waymo was hatched there.
Spangelo worked on a scheme to use drones to deliver goods and on a team that chose which technologies to invest in. In 2017 she left to start Swarm Technologies with Benjamin Longmier, now the company’s CTO. Also a licensed pilot, Longmier is an assistant professor at University of Michigan’s aerospace department since 2015 and has long shuttled between Silicon Valley and academia. (Longmier and Spangelo did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story.)
Through Swarm, the pair intended to deliver connectivity from space—”connecting the world with tiny satellites,” per Spangelo’s Linkedin Page.
A future flock of drones or a fleet of Waymo’s self-driving cars will need to be linked into a communication network to perform their work. For companies developing these and other “internet of things” applications, that could mean paying a fee to access existing wireless networks built by telecom firms like Verizon or AT&T. But others are betting it would be far better business for connected devices to have their own proprietary communications network in space, provided by companies like Swarm; established satellite companies like Inmarsat and Iridium already provide this service on a limited scale.
Venture capitalists have been throwing millions at new satellite companies that promise to perform more cheaply than existing providers. Swarm itself apparently had partnership interest from two Fortune 100 companies, won a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, and inked paid research agreements with NASA and the US Air Force....
A gap in the story
n January 2018, Swarm Technologies applied for a new license to launch satellites fitting the 10cm3 form-factor the FCC considered safe. Four days later, the PSLV rocket took off in India, launching the four smaller satellites the FCC said were too small into space.
What happened? The short answer is, we don’t know. Swarm, Spaceflight, and Antrix—and the government of India itself—all bear some responsibility, but attention has focused on Swarm itself. The company had hired a consulting engineer named Craig Scheffler to handle its FCC applications; he does the same work full-time for Planet, the leading small-satellite start-up. Scheffler wouldn’t speak to me for this story, but his attorney Jeff Carlisle told me he was simply a technical consultant and made clear to Spangelo that Swarm had been denied a license. He no longer works with Swarm.
The informal community of amateur space trackers noticed first. Gunter Krebs, a German software engineer who has maintained a website tracking satellites for more than twenty years, tried to figure out who owned the SpaceBEES and recognized their depiction from regulatory filings. His e-mails to Swarm passed without reply, according to Jonathan McDowell, a researcher at the Havard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who also spotted the SpaceBEES and guessed they belonged to Swarm.
In February, the FCC granted a license to Swarm to fly their larger satellite design. But by March 8 the jig was up: The FCC revoked the license, telling Swarm they would assess its “apparent unauthorized launch and operation of four satellites, and related statements and representations, on its qualifications to be a Commission licensee.” Since then, the FCC has been mum about what’s going on, with a spokesperson only saying it is looking into the matter.
“I’ve never heard of that happening,” the satellite industry consultant says of an unauthorized launch. “If they are communicating with US based ground station on an unregistered satellite segment, they will get into a lot of trouble. The question is, without knowing the location of the Earth stations in the US or the frequencies being used, how do you prove it?”
The FCC knows, at least, the frequencies that the satellite was designed to broadcast on. The ground stations are registered at private homes in Silicon Valley owned by Spangelo and Longmier, which function as the main places of business for the still-tiny start-up, but they are small enough to be moved. Without literally intercepting transmissions, or witness testimony that they happened, the FCC can’t prove that the satellites were operated illegally, even if they were launched without permission.
Given how unusual the case is, some experts speculated the satellites might be authorized by some third country that had not announced itself through the slow channels of global space bureaucracy. Neither Swarm nor Antrix have said this. Indeed, Spangelo told the FCC that she would register her constellation with the global satellite regulator International Telecommunications Union in 2017, but an ITU spokesperson confirmed that Swarm Technologies did not file advanced notice for an experimental satellite constellation.
MercurysBall ago
Swarm Technologies CEO Sara Spangelo was flying high in October 2017—piloting a small plane carrying John Krafcik, the CEO of Waymo, Google’s self-driving car company, and another entrepreneur on a pleasure flight. They passed over Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California. Spangelo joked later on Facebook that Krafcik was “checking out the competition.”
Like Tesla founder Elon Musk, Spangelo’s real interest is in space business, but unlike Musk, her company’s historic first in orbit threatens its very existence. In January 2018, Swarm launched the first satellites into space unauthorized by any government. People familiar with the business of launching satellites into space consider the situation odd, troubling and even dangerous: Access to space is supposed to be expensive, difficult and tightly guarded by nations under international treaty obligations.
How, exactly, did those tiny satellites go from Silicon Valley into a rocket at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the west coast of India, and then to orbit, without anyone asking for its paperwork?
No one at Swarm is talking, and some have hired lawyers. Whether a comedy of errors or a case of corporate line-crossing, the good news is that the experimental satellites were designed with benign intent.
What, some experts warn, if next time it isn’t?
In 2013, Spangelo completed a University of Michigan Ph.D thesis on the potential for satellite networks to carry large amounts of data, then moved to Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), where top space researchers design and execute space missions for NASA. Like many young space scientists, Spangelo next went north to Silicon Valley, taking a job at Google X, the company’s “moonshot factory” that prototypes advanced technology for potential businesses; Waymo was hatched there.
Spangelo worked on a scheme to use drones to deliver goods and on a team that chose which technologies to invest in. In 2017 she left to start Swarm Technologies with Benjamin Longmier, now the company’s CTO. Also a licensed pilot, Longmier is an assistant professor at University of Michigan’s aerospace department since 2015 and has long shuttled between Silicon Valley and academia. (Longmier and Spangelo did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story.)
Through Swarm, the pair intended to deliver connectivity from space—”connecting the world with tiny satellites,” per Spangelo’s Linkedin Page.
A future flock of drones or a fleet of Waymo’s self-driving cars will need to be linked into a communication network to perform their work. For companies developing these and other “internet of things” applications, that could mean paying a fee to access existing wireless networks built by telecom firms like Verizon or AT&T. But others are betting it would be far better business for connected devices to have their own proprietary communications network in space, provided by companies like Swarm; established satellite companies like Inmarsat and Iridium already provide this service on a limited scale.
Venture capitalists have been throwing millions at new satellite companies that promise to perform more cheaply than existing providers. Swarm itself apparently had partnership interest from two Fortune 100 companies, won a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, and inked paid research agreements with NASA and the US Air Force....
A gap in the story
n January 2018, Swarm Technologies applied for a new license to launch satellites fitting the 10cm3 form-factor the FCC considered safe. Four days later, the PSLV rocket took off in India, launching the four smaller satellites the FCC said were too small into space.
What happened? The short answer is, we don’t know. Swarm, Spaceflight, and Antrix—and the government of India itself—all bear some responsibility, but attention has focused on Swarm itself. The company had hired a consulting engineer named Craig Scheffler to handle its FCC applications; he does the same work full-time for Planet, the leading small-satellite start-up. Scheffler wouldn’t speak to me for this story, but his attorney Jeff Carlisle told me he was simply a technical consultant and made clear to Spangelo that Swarm had been denied a license. He no longer works with Swarm.
MercurysBall ago
Who’s flying those satellites?
The informal community of amateur space trackers noticed first. Gunter Krebs, a German software engineer who has maintained a website tracking satellites for more than twenty years, tried to figure out who owned the SpaceBEES and recognized their depiction from regulatory filings. His e-mails to Swarm passed without reply, according to Jonathan McDowell, a researcher at the Havard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who also spotted the SpaceBEES and guessed they belonged to Swarm.
In February, the FCC granted a license to Swarm to fly their larger satellite design. But by March 8 the jig was up: The FCC revoked the license, telling Swarm they would assess its “apparent unauthorized launch and operation of four satellites, and related statements and representations, on its qualifications to be a Commission licensee.” Since then, the FCC has been mum about what’s going on, with a spokesperson only saying it is looking into the matter.
“I’ve never heard of that happening,” the satellite industry consultant says of an unauthorized launch. “If they are communicating with US based ground station on an unregistered satellite segment, they will get into a lot of trouble. The question is, without knowing the location of the Earth stations in the US or the frequencies being used, how do you prove it?”
The FCC knows, at least, the frequencies that the satellite was designed to broadcast on. The ground stations are registered at private homes in Silicon Valley owned by Spangelo and Longmier, which function as the main places of business for the still-tiny start-up, but they are small enough to be moved. Without literally intercepting transmissions, or witness testimony that they happened, the FCC can’t prove that the satellites were operated illegally, even if they were launched without permission.
Given how unusual the case is, some experts speculated the satellites might be authorized by some third country that had not announced itself through the slow channels of global space bureaucracy. Neither Swarm nor Antrix have said this. Indeed, Spangelo told the FCC that she would register her constellation with the global satellite regulator International Telecommunications Union in 2017, but an ITU spokesperson confirmed that Swarm Technologies did not file advanced notice for an experimental satellite constellation.