Fishing boat between bathing in Japan with dead North Koreans on board. Dozens of boats are recorded every year, but the number spiked in 2017, with more than 100 boats found on Japan’s northern coasts. No one can explain the appearance of these ghost ships. Why are there so many?
An answer came in 2020. Using a series of satellites orbiting the Earth, a nonprofit called Global Fishing Watch in Washington, DC, discovered that China had Illegal fishing in North Korean waters, “It’s against the laws of China and North Korea, as well as UN sanctions on North Korea,” said Paul Woods, co-founder and chief innovation officer of the organization. As a result, the North Korean fishermen had to travel further, as far as Russia, for which their small ships were no match. “They can’t go back,” Woods said. China, discovered, immediately halted its activities.
The alarming discovery was made by DC-based Spire Global, which operates more than 100 small satellites in Earth orbit. They are designed to receive radio pings sent by ships around the globe, mainly used by ships to avoid each other at sea. Listening to them is also a useful way to monitor illegal maritime activity.
Woods of the boats said: “The way they move when fishing is very different. “We can predict the type of gear they are using by their speed, direction and how they rotate.” Of the 60,000 vessels that emit such pings, Woods said 5,000 have been found to be engaged in illegal activities thanks to Spire, including fishing at restricted times or transporting protected fish cargo. to protect other ships from port inspection.
Satellite constellations like Spire have seen tremendous growth in recent years, and novel uses like these are becoming more common. Where previously satellites were large, bulky machines costing tens of millions of dollars, technological advances mean that smaller, smaller-sized toasters can now be launch at a fraction of the cost. Flying together in groups or in constellations to carry out unique missions has become a reasonable prospect. “More satellites can now be deployed economically,” said Joel Spark, co-founder and general manager at Spire.
Before 2018, none of the more than 100 active satellites had ever been launched into Earth orbit, said Jonathan McDowell, a satellite specialist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the US. There are now three, with almost 20 more constellations in the pipeline and some 200 more are in development. “The Explosion of Constellations,” McDowell said.
The reasons for flying constellations are many. The most famous is transmitting the Internet to remote locations, made famous by SpaceX’s supermassive constellation of Starlink. This crowd of 3,000 satellites makes up almost half of the satellites in orbit, and it will swell even further to 12,000 or so. Others, like Amazon, have plans for their own large spatial Internet constellations. Many worry about launching too many satellites into orbit, greatly increasing the risk of collisions and creating dangerous space junk.
