Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy on the Starling swarm

Let four satellites decide between themselves, with no instruction from the ground, which signals each should observe.

L3 Launched: confirmed by a party with no stake, or by public data. Rests on c4.
R2 Ran: own technical account. Rests on c1, c2, c3.

Operator	NASA Ames Research Center
Developer	NASA Ames Research Center
Host	Four Starling CubeSats
Where	Earth orbit
Class	classical
Hardware	not stated in what was read
Model or software	Distributed planning software that shares status between spacecraft and plans observations by optimisation
Launched	18 Jul 2023
Ran	after July 2023; not dated in the parts read
Catalogue	STARLING 1, number 57388; matched by name; one of the swarm's four satellites, the reviewer's judgement

What was said, and by whom

“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”

NASA: the developer. What is Starling?, NASA. Published undated (page metadata gives 19 July 2023, the week of launch, but the text reports later results, so the page has been revised since). Read 4 Oct 2026, in part: five sentences of 10,700 characters.
“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.”

NASA: the developer. What is Starling?, NASA. Published undated (page metadata gives 19 July 2023, the week of launch, but the text reports later results, so the page has been revised since). Read 4 Oct 2026, in part: five sentences of 10,700 characters.
“The DSA mission successfully ran on orbit and results were delivered.”

Adams et al., NASA Ames, the experiment's team: the experimenter. Results From the Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy Experiment on Starling, Small Satellite Conference 2024 (Adams and co-authors, NASA Ames, the experiment's team). Published 2024 (year given in search results). Read 4 Oct 2026, in part: four sentences of 40,100 characters. Read from an Internet Archive capture of the page.
OBJECT_NAME: STARLING 1; LAUNCH_DATE: 2023-07-18

CelesTrak satellite catalogue: a public catalogue. Satellite catalogue record 57388 (STARLING 1), CelesTrak. Published undated (a live catalogue record; dated by when it was read). Read 4 Oct 2026, in full.

Where sources disagree

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. Noted; the catalogue's date is used.

Claims to a first

First fully distributed autonomous operation of several spacecraft: unchecked. Recorded as made. Classical autonomy, not a learned model.

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.

Cite or share

Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy on the Starling swarm. Every AI that has run above the Kármán line, graded by evidence. Reviewed 4 Oct 2026. https://karman-si.pages.dev/r/starling-dsa/

Address: https://karman-si.pages.dev/r/starling-dsa/

A badge with this record's marks, at /badge/starling-dsa.svg. This record as data.