SpaceX works with Northrop Grumman on Starshield spy satellites

The decision not to rely on a single company, with one ‘man in charge’. Reuters scoop reveals Elon Musk’s company’s collaboration with the armaments giant on the constellation born from the Starlink platform, for the detection of threats from hypersonic missiles, military communications and control from space

BY EMILIO COZZI

This time SpaceX will not be working alone.

Accustomed to building everything in-house, from launch systems to Starlink satellites, for the first time the company founded by Elon Musk will collaborate with another major player in the space industry: a few days ago, an exclusive by the Reuters news agency revealed that Northrop Grumman is building the new US defence satellite constellation, Starshield. And that the work is, in fact, being carried out together with SpaceX.

Beyond the industrial economic aspect of the collaboration – the value of the contracts exceeds one billion dollars – the news is significant for the American government’s approach to a delicate subject, that of control, from above, of how armaments move on Earth. And for the fact that the choice has been made not to entrust it to a single company, moreover with a ‘one man in charge’.

What is Starshield

Starshield is a constellation of spy satellites to provide an Earth observation and communication service for military purposes for the Defence of the United States of America, reads the section of SpaceX’s website dedicated to the programme. The constituent satellites are also designed to host different payloads that the armed forces intend to carry into orbit. They are apparatuses designed with the intention of tracking possible hypersonic missile attacks from different orbits, one of the most pressing US concerns particularly after the use of the weapon, at the Russian hands, in the war in Ukraine.

According to what was leaked three years ago, when the contracts for the first prototypes were signed with SpaceX and L3Harris (with the Space Development Agency), the architecture of the constellation should be composed of orbital ‘sentinels’ providing a wide and medium field of view, to track possible threats from weapon systems that, it should be remembered, travel at more than five times the speed of sound: from almost two kilometres per second to over two and a half, in the case of Russian weapons against which even American Patriot missiles or European Samp-Ts can do little.

Starshield, which is based on the Starlink architecture, should provide the observation, as well as the communication service and a link for intra-satellite data exchange, via laser. A technology already present on the latest and penultimate generation Starlinks.

As revealed again by Reuters, Musk’s company has been building the constellation since 2021 as part of a $1.8 billion contract with the National Reconnaissance Office (or NRO), an intelligence agency of the US Department of Defence responsible for the construction and in-orbit management of spy devices. In almost four years, more than a dozen prototypes have already been launched beyond the atmosphere. Now work is underway to make the network operational, with hundreds of satellites, to cover every area of the globe.

The Word of Defence

Today, SpaceX works for the Defence not only as an in-orbit transport service, with the Falcon9 and Falcon Heavy rockets (waiting for Starship); it is also in charge of building spy satellites, strategic infrastructure for national security.

Judging by its handling of the relationship, however, Washington does not seem to want to rely on a single supplier. The main reason, of a strategic nature, was expressed by one of Reuters’ sources in clear words: ‘it is in the government’s interest not to rely totally on one company led by one person’. According to the exclusive, ‘Northrop Grumman supplies the sensors for some of the SpaceX satellites. At least 50 of SpaceX’s satellites are expected to be at Northrop Grumman’s facilities in the next few years for testing procedures and sensor installation’.

The participation of Northrop Grumman, the historic defence contractor, is thus intended, yes, to provide consolidated elements and technological know-how, but also to avoid relying exclusively on the services of a single company, and moreover belonging to a man whose attitude has long been less than tender with the Biden administration. It is undeniable that Elon Musk controls a very long lever, that of two (private) infrastructures on which a piece of the world, and the United States in particular, has now relied for crucial activities: Starlink and SpaceX’s orbital transport.

Musk is the entrepreneur who decided to support the Ukrainian armed forces with his own terminals so that they could defend themselves against Russian attacks, a choice that later resulted in a multi-million dollar contract with the Defence. Terminals, however, that through the black market ended up in the hands of the Russian army, which is using them without, apparently, anyone having inhibited or deactivated their use. The Congressional Democrats have started an investigation to verify SpaceX’s responsibilities, in a case that risks becoming thorny: there are many who fear, not without some reason, that Musk’s near-monopoly on the space domain is weakening the government’s position in delicate situations such as an ongoing war.

Exemplary, in order to outline the situation, is the response of the Assistant Secretary of Defence, John Plumb, reported by Breakingdefense; when asked whether the Department of Defence would instruct SpaceX to create a list of terminals approved for use in occupied Ukraine – an apparent desire of Kiev – Plumb replied that he did not believe “that the Department of Defence is in a position to force them to do these things”.