SpaceX’s Starshield is making waves in the Earth observation sector of the satellite services industry, gaining the attention of many competitors within the sector. Starshield, announced in 2022, is essentially military-grade Starlink. It is a separate satellite network designed for national security purposes, leveraging SpaceX’s experience in large satellite constellations with the success of Starlink. The focuses of Starshield are on Earth observation, secure communications, and hosting national security-related payloads. The intent is to support defense operations with more secure infrastructure than the commercial Starlink constellation to meet military standards. There is little public information about Starshield, though SpaceX describes on its website that “Starshield launches satellites with sensing payloads and delivers processed data directly to the user.” Competitors are monitoring Starshield’s development as closely as possible despite the lack of information surrounding it. Starlink’s success has preemptively proven the likelihood of Starshield’s success to competitors who are determined to take the competition seriously. Two thirds of the industry’s revenue came from defense contractors last year, which will be a huge market for SpaceX given their capabilities. Elon Musk’s strong financial backing has competing companies worried that they will not be able to keep up with the level of investment, while others are viewing it as an opportunity for partnerships and growth within the market, pushing the industry to improve services and expand.

Starshield’s focus on secure communications and national security intrinsically involves cybersecurity considerations. While cybersecurity is not often a primary concern in the space industry, the requirements of the US Department of Defense and other government bodies will force SpaceX to design this constellation with robust cybersecurity in order to meet military standards. Notably, this implies that the mission of Starshield itself is to provide military-grade secure communications, so the investment in cybersecurity will be significantly beyond the typical approach for commercial and science missions. Providing global communications to government users and hosting national security payloads means that these services need to be adequately secured. These satellites will likely face attempts at espionage and data breaches, so ensuring encrypted data and secure network infrastructure is critical. Beneficially, Starshield’s focus on cutting-edge defense will encourage competitors to consider and invest in cybersecurity as a mission component, raising the tides of the industry as a whole, especially if partnerships are pursued and formed as a result of Starshield becoming a dominating force in the sector. It will spur improvement in the industry as other Earth observation companies seek to be both competitive and collaborative, which should raise the standards for both cybersecurity in space applications and the development of satellite network constellations itself. It is important to consider, however, that increasing integration between partners in space-based national security and high-value payloads heightens the risk of vulnerabilities across partner connections. Integration between partners and connections between satellite networks and payloads will face threats from adversarial nations and other bad actors.

Foust, Jeff. “Earth Observation Companies Wary of Starshield.” SpaceNews, 19 Sept. 2024, https://spacenews.com/earth-observation-companies-wary-of-starshield/.