Our Star-Webbed Sky

In Dad Won’t Come Back (2020), Albertine Meunier draws attention to a project on a planetary scale, currently under way, which seems straight out of a science-fiction film and whose development is treated by the media with great discretion. This is the “Starlink” project, led by the company SpaceX of the entrepreneur Elon Musk, which envisages the launch of at least 12,000 satellites in the short term (2025), with a long-term target of 42,000 satellites. The stated aim is to offer a global Internet connection covering the most remote areas of the globe. Thanks to their low orbit, Musk’s satellites promise connection speeds markedly higher than those of traditional satellites. As one might have anticipated, this project raises many legitimate concerns: the risk of uncontrollable chain collisions that could generate a cloud of space debris (the so-called Kessler syndrome¹), light pollution disrupting visual astronomical observations, radio-frequency pollution hampering astronomical observation by radio telescopes, and the waste of rare metals that are extremely needed on Earth².

In order to shed light on this concealed project, Meunier created an Instagram account, @Starlink_Satellite – whose name is very close to the project’s real Instagram account: @Starlink_Satellites – gathering a collection of videos filmed by amateurs from various locations, bearing witness through images to the passage of the “trains” of satellites. Meunier also offers a map indicating in real time the position of each satellite of the project. By these means, the artist seeks to create “insignificant disturbances³” in the company’s communication strategy, while bearing witness to the authoritarian appropriation of the sky by the company SpaceX.

On the basis of this work by Albertine Meunier, a few questions arise naturally. How is it that a project of pharaonic scale, associated with multiple risks, is currently being implemented without any public debate and without any resistance? If the objective is to provide Internet access to populations living in isolated areas, do these same populations not often lack far more essential resources, quite simply water and food? Indeed, on closer inspection, the stated objective of the project seems relegated to the background, and its military scope on a planetary scale becomes evident⁴, since this very dense network of low-orbit satellites could radically improve the command of combat drones (UAVs) and make the remote guidance of missiles more precise, among other military applications. Albertine Meunier’s work underlines the fact that, when it comes to identifying the stakes and the actors behind technological advances, besides techno-economic power, it is essential not to underestimate the role of the military sector⁵, often absent from discourse, but whose interests substantially affect technological evolution.

Meunier’s project enriches the real by bringing to light a hidden aspect, restoring conditions of visibility capable of widening the scope of observation, and therefore of thought. The result is a new landscape that reveals an attempt to literally envelop the world in a physical network of surveillance and control, while revealing the link between two elements usually presented as disconnected. This is the link between technics and the military sector, ready to manifest itself during conflicts but, above all, taking part in mechanisms of surveillance and domination “turned inward” in peacetime⁶.

1. Donald J. Kessler and Burton G. Cour-Palais, «Collision frequency of artificial satellites: The creation of a debris belt ». Journal of Geophysical Research [en ligne]. 1978, vol. 83, n° A6, p. 2637.↩︎

2. Starlink satellites, with a lifespan of only 6 years, are designed to burn up in the atmosphere during their descent.↩︎

3. See the reflection associated with the project, on Albertine Meunier’s website: https://www.albertinemeunier.net/dad-wont-come-back accessed December 1, 2024.↩︎

4. China has officially denounced the project, while trying to compete with it through a project of the same type (the GW project), whereas a few articles have appeared scattered in the Western press, without really sparking debate.↩︎

5. Many technologies, whether recent (the Internet, GPS navigation, Wi-Fi, etc.) or older (the microwave oven, “super glue,” etc.), originate in military research and uses. See in this regard OTAN, Military inventions that we use every day [en ligne]. 2025. disponible à l'adresse : https://www.nato.int/cps/fr/natohq/declassified_215371.htm, accessed December 1, 2024. Pierre Barboza, for his part, retraces the military research from which digital images derive, and, broadly speaking, the implementation of digital technology as we know it today. See in this regard Pierre Barboza, «Petite histoire de l’image numérique : le fil rouge de l’interactivité ». MédiaMorphoses [en ligne]. 2002, vol. 6, n° 1, p. 24–30.↩︎

6. As Edward Snowden taught us.↩︎