{
 "id": "starling-dsa",
 "entry": null,
 "name": "Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy on the Starling swarm",
 "group": "ran",
 "class": "classical",
 "location": "Earth orbit",
 "operator": "NASA Ames Research Center",
 "developer": "NASA Ames Research Center",
 "host": "Four Starling CubeSats",
 "catalogue": {
  "number": 57388,
  "name": "STARLING 1",
  "launched": "2023-07-18",
  "decayed": null,
  "match": "by name; one of the swarm's four satellites, the reviewer's judgement"
 },
 "dates": {
  "launched": "2023-07-18",
  "ran": "after July 2023; not dated in the parts read",
  "reported": "2024",
  "ended": null
 },
 "hardware": "not stated in what was read",
 "software": "Distributed planning software that shares status between spacecraft and plans observations by optimisation",
 "did": "Let four satellites decide between themselves, with no instruction from the ground, which signals each should observe.",
 "marks": [
  {
   "stage": "L",
   "evidence": 3,
   "basis": [
    "c4"
   ]
  },
  {
   "stage": "R",
   "evidence": 2,
   "basis": [
    "c1",
    "c2",
    "c3"
   ]
  }
 ],
 "claims": [
  {
   "id": "c1",
   "kind": "quote",
   "text": "The accomplishments of DSA onboard Starling include the first fully distributed autonomous operation of multiple spacecraft, the first use of space-to-space communications to autonomously share status information between multiple spacecraft",
   "speaker": "NASA",
   "relation": "developer",
   "source": "nasa-starling",
   "url": "https://www.nasa.gov/smallspacecraft/what-is-starling/",
   "source_title": "What is Starling?",
   "publisher": "NASA",
   "source_kind": "project-page",
   "published": "undated",
   "published_basis": "page metadata gives 19 July 2023, the week of launch, but the text reports later results, so the page has been revised since",
   "accessed": "2026-10-04",
   "copy_route": "direct",
   "read": "in part: five sentences of 10,700 characters"
  },
  {
   "id": "c2",
   "kind": "quote",
   "text": "DSA onboard software autonomously coordinated the selection of the best GPS signals across all Starling spacecraft to accurately capture regions of higher or lower electron density.",
   "speaker": "NASA",
   "relation": "developer",
   "source": "nasa-starling",
   "url": "https://www.nasa.gov/smallspacecraft/what-is-starling/",
   "source_title": "What is Starling?",
   "publisher": "NASA",
   "source_kind": "project-page",
   "published": "undated",
   "published_basis": "page metadata gives 19 July 2023, the week of launch, but the text reports later results, so the page has been revised since",
   "accessed": "2026-10-04",
   "copy_route": "direct",
   "read": "in part: five sentences of 10,700 characters"
  },
  {
   "id": "c3",
   "kind": "quote",
   "text": "The DSA mission successfully ran on orbit and results were delivered.",
   "speaker": "Adams et al., NASA Ames, the experiment's team",
   "relation": "experimenter",
   "source": "smallsat-dsa-results",
   "url": "https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5837&context=smallsat",
   "source_title": "Results From the Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy Experiment on Starling",
   "publisher": "Small Satellite Conference 2024 (Adams and co-authors, NASA Ames, the experiment's team)",
   "source_kind": "paper",
   "published": "2024",
   "published_basis": "year given in search results",
   "accessed": "2026-10-04",
   "copy_route": "wayback",
   "read": "in part: four sentences of 40,100 characters"
  },
  {
   "id": "c4",
   "kind": "data",
   "fields": {
    "OBJECT_NAME": "STARLING 1",
    "LAUNCH_DATE": "2023-07-18"
   },
   "speaker": "CelesTrak satellite catalogue",
   "relation": "catalogue",
   "source": "celestrak-57388",
   "url": "https://celestrak.org/satcat/records.php?CATNR=57388&FORMAT=json",
   "source_title": "Satellite catalogue record 57388 (STARLING 1)",
   "publisher": "CelesTrak",
   "source_kind": "catalogue",
   "published": "undated",
   "published_basis": "a live catalogue record; dated by when it was read",
   "accessed": "2026-10-04",
   "copy_route": "json",
   "read": "in full"
  }
 ],
 "conflicts": [
  {
   "summary": "The launch date. NASA's page gives 17 July 2023; the catalogue gives 18 July 2023. The catalogue keeps universal time, which would account for a day.",
   "status": "noted; the catalogue's date is used"
  }
 ],
 "notes": "Classed as classical autonomy: the planning is done by optimisation, with no learned model named in what was read. It is in the register and out of the count of models run.",
 "changed": "Added on 4 October 2026, in the second round of reading.",
 "headline": "L3 R2"
}