# NASA's Starling satellite navigates without GPS using nearby space objects

_Friday, September 11, 2026 at 10:31 AM EDT · Science, Infrastructure · Latest · Tier 2 — Notable_

NASA said its Starling mission demonstrated FALCON, a system that determines a satellite's position by using other spacecraft and orbital debris as reference points instead of GPS.

The joint flight experiment with EraDrive, a Stanford spinout, combined EraDrive's Era-Core flight software with Starling's star-tracker cameras and an onboard catalog of about 20,000 known space objects. NASA said FALCON improved the known orbits of more than 200 objects over a three-day period without ground-operator intervention, and that the onboard catalog updates produced more accurate object-position predictions than ground stations supplied.

Later this year Starling's four-spacecraft swarm will share tracking information to refine positions.

## Sources

- [SciTechDaily](https://scitechdaily.com/nasa-just-proved-satellites-can-navigate-without-gps/)

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