From Space to Species: How Tracking 100,000 Animals Could Transform Science

A compact CubeSat recently launched on a SpaceX rocket marks a major step for Project ICARUS (International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space), an initiative to track wildlife at unprecedented scale and detail. The effort aims to combine tiny solar-powered tags with a network of small satellites to monitor animal movements and physiology in near real time.

What Project ICARUS will do

After an initial test using an antenna aboard the International Space Station in 2020 that tracked hundreds of individuals across 15 species, the program paused following the end of a Germany–Russia space collaboration in 2022. Engineers used the interruption to redesign the system into a far smaller unit. The new ICARUS receiver is about 10 centimeters long and now rides on compact, box-shaped CubeSats.

In a coming test phase, the recently launched CubeSat will verify orbital stability and reliable communications with ground stations. A second satellite is planned for March in partnership with a global conservation organization, with a goal of operating six ICARUS satellites by 2027.

How the technology works

Tiny solar-powered tags, currently weighing about 3–4 grams (with a 1‑gram prototype in development), send brief data pings to the satellites. Alongside GPS position, the tags can record body temperature and local environmental conditions such as humidity, air pressure and acceleration. The light, unobtrusive design is essential: if tags altered behavior, the tracking data would be misleading.

"I think we need a new Earth observation system for life itself," says Martin Wikelski, director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, who leads the project. "We know it will provide amazing information."

Over the next year the team plans to tag and continuously monitor between 5,000 and 10,000 animals, with an eventual goal of tracking 100,000 individuals across many species — from large mammals to insects.

Why this matters

Beyond mapping migration routes and timing, researchers hope ICARUS will unlock new insights into ecology and human risk. For example, animal movement patterns could improve short-term weather forecasts in remote mountain regions or provide early warnings of disease spread such as avian influenza. There are even exploratory ideas — could goats grazing a volcano detect early signals of eruption? Could high-altitude birds help forecast dangerous weather for climbers?

Wikelski and his collaborators also suggest the data could become valuable to decision-makers and insurers who need reliable environmental indicators. More broadly, revealing the many ways animals contribute to Earth's systems may strengthen public and policy support for conservation.

Challenges and ethics

Scaling to tens of thousands of tagged animals raises logistical and ethical questions: ensuring tags remain harmless to animals, protecting sensitive location data from misuse, and securing long-term funding and coordination across regions and species. The team emphasizes careful testing, transparent data policies, and collaboration with local researchers and communities.

Project ICARUS embarks on an ambitious path: combining miniaturized electronics, nanosatellites and global collaboration to turn animals into distributed sensors for a changing planet. The next few years of testing and deployment will determine how transformative this approach becomes.