Animal observation from space: New Icarus receiver to be launched into space

The animal observation program Icarus will soon be active again. In the coming week, a new receiver for the program will be launched into space. Currently, Icarus is halted due to the war in Ukraine.

Presumably on November 22, a Falcon 9 from the US space company SpaceX will bring the Gena-OT satellite with the new Icarus receiver into orbit, the Max Planck Society (MPG) announced. Initially, a three-month test phase is planned before the scientific program can be resumed. The launch of another satellite with an Icarus receiver is planned for next spring.

Icarus, an abbreviation for International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space, is a program to observe various animal movements around the world. The program, originally a cooperation between MPG, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, started in 2020 with an antenna mounted on the Russian module of the International Space Station (ISS). In 2022, it was halted in the course of sanctions against Russia following the attack on Ukraine.

Smaller, more efficient, more powerful

Since then, MPG, together with the Munich-based space company Talos, has further developed the Icarus system and shrunk it to such an extent that it fits into a ten-centimeter Cubesat. In addition, it has become more powerful: the new receiver can read four times as many sensors and enables faster data transmissions as well as remote maintenance, while only requiring one-tenth of the energy of its predecessor. "What used to require a large ISS antenna now fits in the palm of your hand," says Talos CEO Gregor Langer.

To observe them, animals -- from migratory birds to large mammals -- are equipped with so-called tags. These are two cubic centimeter, five-gram boxes that contain various sensors, a communication unit, and a solar cell and battery for power supply. The sensors include GPS for position determination, an accelerometer to observe an animal's behavior, a magnetometer to detect orientation relative to the Earth's magnetic field, and sensors that measure air pressure, humidity, and temperature.

The tags send the data into space at regular intervals, formerly to the transponder on the ISS, in the future to the satellite. From there, the data is transmitted to Earth so that researchers can work with it.

MPG also plans to expand the program: a second Gena-OT satellite with an Icarus receiver is already finished and is scheduled to launch into space in spring 2026 on board a SpaceX rocket. By mid-2027, the constellation named Icarus 2.0 is to be expanded to six receivers. This will enable better coverage: in the first version, data exchange was only possible if there was a line of sight to the ISS. In the future, data on animal movements will be available practically in real-time.

(wpl)