A US tech start-up has been slapped with a historic fine for launching unauthorised satellites, prompting warnings about “runaway cowboy-like behaviour” from private companies joining the space race.

Swarm Technologies was fined $US900,000 ($1.28 million) for launching four mini satellites in January 2018 after explicitly being denied permission by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over concerns about the ability to track them.

An investigation found Swarm used an unaffiliated launch company in India to get around the restrictions, but was caught out when the satellites transmitted signals back to a station in Georgia in the US.

“We will aggressively enforce the FCC’s requirements that companies seek FCC authorisation prior to deploying and operating communications satellites and Earth stations,” FCC Enforcement Bureau chief Rosemary Harold said.

“These important obligations protect other operators against radio interference and collisions, making space a safer place to operate.”

Swarm’s website says it is striving to create “the world’s lowest-cost satellite network”.

It is believed to be the first US company to launch unauthorised satellites, which were roughly the size of smartphones, and the fine is historic in the example it sets.

“The size of the penalty imposed is probably not significant enough to deter future behaviour, but the negative press coverage is likely to prevent this company and others from attempting to do this again,” FCC commissioner Michael O’Rielly said.

As well as the fine, Swarm will also be subjected to more rigorous FCC oversight, and a requirement to submit pre-launch notices to the commission.

‘Runaway cowboys pose real risks’

The historic launch and fine come as an increasing number of private companies look to make a profit from space exploration.

NASA has recently offered a giant carrot in the form of $US2.6 billion ($3.7 billion) to private firms to get science and technology to the moon.

There is a very real prospect of space tourism, asteroid mining and terraforming on uninhabitable planets in the near future.

Astrophysicist Alan Duffy said NASA had played a role in fostering this move away from purely government-initiated space exploration.

“At some level NASA unleashed a genie from a bottle,” he said.

“They’re trying to intentionally unleash commercial activity in space, have companies come in and do what previously governments tried and hopefully do it better, cheaper, faster.

“The problem is you’re also getting a lot of the runaway start-up Silicon Valley culture as well. And the core to that is that you break or bend rules.

Low-Earth orbit at this point is the Wild West. There are little to no regulations.”

A number of private companies have made significant inroads to space exploration in recent years, most notably Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which successfully launched a US military satellite into orbit last month.

However, Associate Professor Duffy said there were notable differences to their process than other start-ups.

“For all of this idea of the company being unleashed, they were actually hand-in-hand with NASA,” he said.

“They were deploying NASA engineers and constantly working with NASA safety regulations.”

Both the FCC and Associate Professor Duffy said it was vital to regulate private firms because of the real-life risks that unauthorised, or untrackable, satellites posed.

“If you don’t stop this this runaway cowboy-like behaviour now then someone’s going to get hurt sooner or later,” he said.

“There is a reason that we have to manage communications … if a satellite’s taken out and the imagery that they were relying on for forest fire management, for example, is lost there are real consequences.

“Just because there’s not many people up there doesn’t mean you can’t hurt people down here.”

-ABC