CEO Says Launching Satellites Without FCC Permission Was 'A Mistake'

Sara Spangelo is the CEO of a young start-up called Swarm Technologies. Swarm had secured a spot on an Indian rocket for its product: a set of four small satellites nicknamed Spacebees. The Spacebees are prototypes for Swarm’s ambitious plan to provide internet access to areas without it. When the satellites successfully made it into orbit, Spangelo felt “super relieved and excited,” she says. Two months later, Spangelo received a curt email from the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC, the message said, wouldn’t review any of Swarm’s applications for future satellite launches until officials figured out what had happened with this one. The agency, it turned out, had denied Swarm’s request to launch the Spacebees in 2017. Swarm did it anyway. As far as anyone can remember, the launch of the Spacebees marked the first time a US company had sent a commercial satellite into orbit without permission from federal regulators.

It’s not clear whether the inquiry will result in disciplinary action against Swarm, and it’s even less clear what the nature of that would be. The agency is in uncharted regulatory territory. A penalty would send a clear message to other commercial-satellite providers, and might result in more stringent application rules down the line. Not issuing a penalty could risk the rise of a nightmare scenario in low-Earth orbit, in which private companies disregard federal regulators.