After 10 months in orbit, the Starling spacecraft swarm successfully demonstrated its primary mission's key objectives, representing significant achievements in the capability of swarm configurations.

Swarms of satellites may one day be used in deep space exploration. An autonomous network of spacecraft could self-navigate, manage scientific experiments, and execute maneuvers to respond to environmental changes without the burden of significant communications delays between the swarm and Earth.

"The success of Starling's initial mission represents a landmark achievement in the development of autonomous networks of small spacecraft," said Roger Hunter, program manager for NASA's Small Spacecraft Technology program at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "The team has been very successful in achieving our objectives and adapting in the face of challenges.

The 2020s have already seen many lunar landing attempts, although several of them have crashed or toppled over. With all the excitement surrounding the prospect of humans returning to the moon, both commercial interests and scientists stand to gain.

The moon is uniquely suitable for researchers to build telescopes they can't put on Earth because it doesn't have as much satellite interference as Earth, nor a magnetic field blocking out radio waves. But only recently have astronomers like me started thinking about potential conflicts between the desire to expand knowledge of the universe on one side and geopolitical rivalries and commercial gain on the other, and how to balance those interests.