Startups Took Over Earth, and Now They’re Headed to Space — With Creepy Pepsi Ads in Tow

CubeSats are already defining the sky over your head

Illustration by Jon Han

Last November, Reuters released a bombshell report detailing the location of 39 Muslim “reeducation” camps in China’s Xinjiang province. Now widely understood as detention centers perpetuating serious human rights abuses, these camps had expanded in secret for years. But for all its restrictions, Beijing couldn’t hide them from a set of eyes hovering in Lower Earth Orbit (LEO).

Reuters, in partnership with Earthrise Media, a company that licenses satellite imagery to media, used photos from a constellation of some 120 CubeSats to document the otherwise impenetrable region. These satellites aren’t the big ones you might be familiar with from high school science class: CubeSats are barely bigger than a standard Rubik’s Cube, and are relatively cheap to construct at around $50,000. (Full satellite launches can cost tens of millions of dollars.)

CubeSats allow people to track natural disasters, document deforestation, and monitor crop yields. As Futurism recently reported, they might even enable a new kind of orbital advertising — just look at the night sky for a sponsored message from Pepsi. (For its part, the soft drink maker says it only tested the technology…