Max Bhatti i Basalt Space’s four remaining engineers worked 22 hours a day in March to assemble the startup’s first satellite so that it would be completed before its final launch date. “It makes 996 look like a vacation,” says Bhatti, the CEO. To protect the electronics from contamination, the team worked in a well-ventilated tent that Bhatti says is more dust-free than a hospital. It is located in one of three adjoining apartments the company rents in the Lower Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco.
For the past two years, the apartments have been the Basalt team’s home and office, equipped with all the basics of a hacker’s home, including a washing machine, an outdoor gym, and stacks of ramen. The workers, all in their 20s, feel a sense of urgency amid the third and largest wave yet of satellite development across the United States.
Basalt is part of a generation of startups that aim to expand reliable and secure access to satellite imaging, navigation and communications services. According to their vision, more of the world will be constantly photographed, more things will be tracked, and customers will not have to worry that gatekeepers like Starlink will cut off their transmissions.
From the launch of the first satellite in 1957 until the last few decades, governments and defense contractors have largely controlled access to data from space. Then alternatives emerged, including Globalstar, Planet Labs and Skybox Imaging, which launched several low-cost satellites and passed on certain data to paying customers. But Basalt wants to go further, providing each customer with its own set of five to 15 satellites in much the same way that cloud computing companies give companies access to data centers full of advanced servers. Faster satellite data can assist farmers stop pests and diseases before they spread widely. Fewer restrictions and greater reliability could enable news organizations and investors to better understand migration and trade.
“The question I asked myself when I started the company was, ‘What is the most fundamental thing we could change in the aerospace industry?’” Bhatti says. “And I think the idea is that the end user should be able to directly task the entire constellation, not even one satellite.”
Operating satellites using artificial intelligence instead of humans is a significant, if unproven, part of Basalt’s business plans. However, the startup has already been helped by the rapid decline in the costs of producing and launching satellites over the past five years. The Trump administration’s recent decision to ease some regulatory hurdles also helped, according to Bhatti. “A lot of the hurdles that had to be overcome have disappeared, which everyone in the industry welcomes,” he says, sinking to go into detail.
War in Iran it also provided an excellent opportunity to showcase the technology. Planet Labs and other satellite imagery providers recently restricted access to feeds from the Middle East, citing concerns about misuse during the conflict. Bhatti believes that for the thousands of dollars a month that customers pay satellite imaging providers, they could lease or own their own constellation via Basalt. “No one can force you to act. No one can turn off data,” he says, although it’s unclear whether this latest promise will withstand future regulatory pressures. “Especially in times like these, it’s obvious how important it is to actually see what’s going on underground. What is the truth really?”
But Basalt and other recent companies face the question of whether customers will achieve the expected volume. Satellite startups that set their sights on obtaining data on climate change a few years ago it turned out to be wrongwith their services now serving mainly the military. As the industry flourishes, opposition to space debris, lithe pollution and other environmental impacts of satellites may grow. More opportunities for intrusive monitoring from space could also draw civil liberties activists into the fray.