Satellites high above Earth may soon have fewer places to hide.

San Francisco-based company Astranis announced today (Aug. 13) that it's developing a line of spacecraft called Perceptor, which will keep an eye on satellite activity in geostationary orbit (GEO).

GEO lies 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth, an altitude at which orbital speed matches our planet's rotational velocity. It's therefore a popular destination for communications, weather and reconnaissance spacecraft — and, increasingly, an arena for off-Earth spying, as space powers seek to keep tabs on their competitors' activities.

Astranis currently operates five satellites in this distant orbital realm, which "support the U.S. military, bring connectivity to remote areas and provide critical capabilities like GPS," according to the company's website.

It plans to leverage and extend this expertise with Perceptor, helping the U.S. government and other potential customers learn more about what's happening high above our heads. The new line will be based on Astranis' "MicroGEO" satellite platform, so named because it's smaller than typical GEO craft.

"Astranis provides mission-critical infrastructure for strategic higher orbits. What we found is our means to detect and respond to emerging threats to this infrastructure are sorely lacking," John Gedmark, Astranis' CEO and co-founder, said in a statement today.

"There are blind spots that will be used against us if not eliminated," he added. "With Perceptor, we're meeting the increasing demand for security in GEO with our proven on-orbit platform and ability to produce at scale."

Perceptor spacecraft will sport a variety of sensors, which will allow them to take the measure of other satellites and their broader GEO surroundings.

"Multi-angle flybys can assess spacecraft capabilities, help troubleshoot anomalies on friendly spacecraft, and provide additional eyes in a domain where awareness has historically been limited," Astranis' statement reads.

Each Perceptor will also be highly maneuverable, using electric propulsion "to traverse the full GEO arc, repositioning dozens of times over its mission lifetime," company representatives added.

The statement does not provide a target timeline for the first Perceptor missions. But the need for such a capability already exists, as the activities of certain Russian and Chinese satellites show.

In 2020, for example, officials with the U.S. Space Force announced that two Russian spacecraft got within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of an American spy satellite, behavior the branch's then-chief described as "unusual and disturbing."

And, in 2023, experts announced that China's TJS-3 GEO spacecraft had taken close looks at USA 233 and USA 298, both of which are thought to be Space Force spy satellites.

SpaceX continued its busy 2025 tonight (Sept. 11), sending a satellite high above Earth for an Indonesian telecom company.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Nusantara Lima satellite lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 9:56 p.m. EDT (0156 GMT on Sept. 12), after being grounded for three days by bad weather.

The rocket's first stage returned to Earth as planned about 8.5 minutes later, touching down on the SpaceX drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas," which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

It was the 23rd launch and landing for this particular booster (which is known by the designation 1078), according to a SpaceX mission description. That's seven short of the company's reflight record, which was set late last month on a launch of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued carrying Nusantara Lima skyward. The satellite was deployed into geosynchronous transfer orbit on schedule, 27.5 minutes after liftoff.

The satellite, which was built by Boeing, will set up shop in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), 22,236 miles (35,785 kilometers) above Earth. Orbital speed matches Earth's rotational speed at that altitude, allowing spacecraft to "hover" over one patch of the planet. GEO is therefore a popular orbit for communications, weather and reconnaissance spacecraft.

Nusantara Lima is expected to start work in 2026 after completing a series of checkouts. PT Pasifik Satelit Nusantara (PSN), Indonesia's first satellite-based private telecom company, will use the spacecraft to beam service to customers across Indonesia's 17,000 islands, as well as in neighboring countries.

"Indonesia was one of the first nations to adopt satellite communications to connect its citizens, and Nusantara Lima continues that legacy," Adi Rahman Adiwoso, CEO of PSN Group, said in a Boeing statement last month.

"This satellite will empower communities, schools, and businesses that have never had reliable access before," Adiwoso added. Nusantara Lima, "with the capacity of more than 160 Gbps, will strengthen our capability to provide national capacity for our nation[al] needs. Our partnership with Boeing and our global technology partners is about making sure no one is left behind as Indonesia grows."

Tonight's launch was the 114th Falcon 9 mission of 2025. More than 70% of these flights have been dedicated to building out the Starlink megaconstellation in low Earth orbit, which consists of more than 8,300 operational satellites and is growing all the time.

SpaceX has also launched four other missions so far this year. They were test flights of its next-generation Starship megarocket, which the company is developing to help humanity settle Mars, among other goals. The most recent Starship launch occurred on Aug. 26 and was a complete success, according to SpaceX.

Two commercial satellites have completed an undocking maneuver high above Earth, signaling the successful end to a pioneering spacecraft life-extension mission.

The Mission Extension Vehicle-1 (MEV-1), developed by Northrop Grumman Corporation’s Space Logistics LLC, docked with Intelsat’s IS-901 communications satellite in 2020 in a graveyard orbit, a few hundred miles above geosynchronous orbit (GEO), an orbital belt 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth.

MEV-1, which launched atop a Russian Proton rocket in October 2019 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, then brought IS-901 back to GEO and allowed it to restart its operations. But now, after extending the life of IS-901 for five years, the mission has come to an end.

IS-901 has been taken back into the GEO graveyard — where decommissioned satellites are positioned to remove them safely from the active GEO belt — by MEV-1. There, the two spacecraft undocked. Just as the 2020 rendezvous was the first docking between commercial spacecraft in GEO, this marks the first such commercial undocking.

Related: Watch Northrop Grumman's MEV-1 dock with Intelsat 901!

This is not the end for MEV-1, however, as the spacecraft is currently relocating to the next servicing mission, according to Northrop Grumman. This is all part of the company’s plans to provide life-extension services for satellites in GEO.

"The first-of-its kind technology that extended a satellite’s life is paving the way for an entire infrastructure of future on-orbit satellite servicing missions for a variety of customers," Rob Hauge, president of Northrop Grumman Space Logistics, said in an April 9 statement. "We are continuing to invest in next-generation capabilities to deliver the most technologically advanced servicing capabilities to support and maintain new and existing space-based assets."

MEV-1 is not the only player in the satellite life-extension game. Northrop Grumman Space Logistics’ follow-on spacecraft, MEV-2, is currently docked to Intelsat 10-02 and will continue providing life-extension services for an additional four years.

The U.S. Space Force also recently tapped Northrop Grumman for the Elixir refueling payload program, which will "enable the Space Force to refine tactics and procedures for rendezvous and proximity operations, docking, refueling, and undocking of on-orbit vehicles," according to a different Northrop Grumman statement.

Meanwhile, Astroscale U.S. will attempt to refuel a pair of Space Force spacecraft in 2026, following an announcement at the 40th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs earlier this month. Elsewhere, China launched its own experimental refueling spacecraft, Shijian 25, in January this year.

Countries and companies are pursuing life extension and satellite-servicing capabilities for a range of uses and reasons, including reducing space debris, potential cost savings and enabling flexible and sustainable satellite operations.

True Anomaly will take its space-security work far afield next year.

The Colorado-based startup, which aims to make space a safer and more sustainable realm for the U.S. government and its partners and allies, revealed today (April 3) that it plans to send its Jackal satellites to geosynchronous orbit (GEO) and cislunar (Earth-moon) space in 2026.

"Beyond LEO [low Earth orbit], GEO and cislunar are obvious extensions of the Jackal platform and represent critical domains within the space superiority mission set," True Anomaly CEO and co-founder Even Rogers said in a statement today.

True Anomaly, which was founded in 2022, bills Jackal as an autonomous orbital vehicle — "a multi-role spacecraft with a modular architecture that delivers cost-effective, scalable performance and maximum operational flexibility," according to the statement.

Related: Startup True Anomaly snags $100 million for space security work

Jackal's designers "set out to define an entirely new category of spacecraft — one that sets the performance benchmark for space superiority," the statement continues.

That performance is achieved, among other things, by high-maneuverability propulsion and an intelligent operating system that together allow for complex operations, such as the close approach and observation of other spacecraft.

Jackal has been to space already: The company sent two of the satellites to LEO in March 2024, on SpaceX's Transporter-10 rideshare mission. Both satellites deployed their solar panels and successfully generated power, but they were not able to conduct a rendezvous test as planned.

A third Jackal launched in December on Bandwagon-2, another SpaceX rideshare effort. True Anomaly has notched a number of milestones with that mission, which may still be active.

And another Jackal is scheduled to launch later this year: One of the satellites will ride a Firefly Aerospace Alpha rocket to orbit, for a rapid-response U.S. Space Force mission called Victus Haze.

True Anomaly's release does not discuss the planned missions to GEO and cislunar space in detail. But it does stress why these off-Earth realms are so important to U.S. national security.

GEO, for example, is a favored spot for spy satellites, because it's the altitude (22,236 miles, or 35,786 kilometers) at which orbital velocity matches the speed of Earth's rotation. Spacecraft in GEO therefore "hover" over the same patch of the planet, allowing continuous observation.

And U.S. officials have repeatedly said that the country is engaged in a space race with China, with the moon as the destination. Both nations aim to establish bases near the lunar south pole, which is thought to be rich in water ice.

"As global lunar activities increase, threats in cislunar orbits will quickly follow," True Anomaly said in today's statement. "No future lunar economy can exist without a robust lunar satellite infrastructure, and by investing in cislunar today, True Anomaly is developing scalable, cost-effective solutions that will help safeguard lunar operations and defense capabilities well into the future."

The Myanmar cyclone and Chinese earthquake disasters demonstrated that the world has plenty ofimaging satellites to monitor disasters but is still unable to make imagery andother data easily and widely available to emergency-response teams, governmentofficials said.

The supply of imagerycontinues to grow. Italy's Cosmo-Skymed and Germany's TerraSAR-X radarsatellites both contributed imagery to the relief efforts following the recentcatastrophes in Myanmar and China. In terms of what is available, governmentofficials said the combination of those two satellites, along with Canada's Radarsat, has made radar imagery nearly as easy to obtain as optical imagery. "Todaywe can no longer complain about the Earth observation infrastructure,"said Delilah Al Khudhairy, head of the Institute for Protection and Security ofthe Citizen at the European Union's Joint Research Center in Ispra, Italy. "There is an overwhelmingamount of product available. What we need is to facilitate the tasking ofthe data. It needs to be more user-driven."

In presentations here May27-28 during the Berlin air show, ILA 2008, Al Khudhairy and other governmentofficials said the International Charter for Space and Major Disasters, createdin 1999 to coordinate satellite operators' response to natural catastrophes,needs to be made more responsive.

Charter members includethe European Space Agency and the national space agencies of Argentina, Britain, Canada, China, France, India, Japan and the United States.

The charter has beenactivated 175 times since 1999, most recently May 12 when China, as a charter member, called on charter assistance following the earthquake in Sichuan province, according to figures compiled by the French space agency, CNES.

Because Myanmar authorities were reluctant to call on global assistance, the charter was activatedby the United Nations (U.N.) to respond to that nation's cyclonedisaster.

David Stevens, of theU.N. Office of Outer Space Affairs and a coordinator of the U.N. Space-basedInformation for Disaster Management and Emergency Response, or Spider, program,said the two Asian disasters illustrate the danger of a duplication of effortamong response teams turning imagery into usable maps for relief workers.

"This is the firsttime we have seen this," Stevens said of the overlap of agenciesassembling data on disaster areas. "It is an example of how things aredeveloping and it needs to be resolved."

Guenter Schreier of theGerman Aerospace Center, DLR, which in 2003 established the ZKI Center forSatellite-Based Crisis Information — a 24/7 facility to assemble satellite datain the hours after a disaster strikes — said what is missing is a middle layerof data management between those assembling the data and those who need it.

One South Africangovernment official said the charter has proved difficult to activate fornon-members whose domestic catastrophes do not rise to the level that attractsworld attention.

"They have basicallytold us that our problems are not serious enough," this official said.

Several officials saidthe charter has a budget and a mandate and cannot exceed either. Al Khudhairysaid the mandate — natural disasters only — is a limitation that should bereconsidered. "We should be able to invoke the charter for human-causeddisasters such as war refugees," she said.

Jerome Bequignon, aEuropean Space Agency charter representative, agreed that the charter remainsincomplete without a way of delivering the goods quickly, and in an easilyaccessible format. Bequignon said the Group on Earth Observations, known asGEO, based in Geneva and created by around 60 nations, is assembling anInternet portal that ultimately should provide one-stop-shop service permittingdisaster-response teams to select from a range of space-based sensorsoverflying the affected areas.

JoséAchache, GEO's director, said June 5 that his organization is assembling such aWeb site but that it is not yet ready. When it is, he said, at least onebottleneck in the disaster-response chain — where to go to find out what satellite data is available — willbe removed.

• Reacting to Disaster
• Cracking the Code of Pre-Earthquake Signals
• High-Definition Imagery of Earth Shot from Space