I Toured the Company Mapping Space Debris. Then I Polled Worried and Hopeful Scientists

Walking inside LeoLabs’ new space radar nestled in the Maui hills felt like entering a computer. Wires dangled overhead, servers whined, and the temperature climbed in the metal box as the air conditioning leaked out when we entered.

“You don’t want to be in there when the whole thing’s running,” said Matthew Adelman, LeoLabs’ senior manager of radar systems. “Not just for the safety, but also for the noise.”

The radar designed to track space objects, called Scout-S, is the size of a 20-foot shipping container and can be transported anywhere in the world. You can hook it up to an electrical grid and fiber internet, but its real calling card is portability. You could drop the Scout-S off-grid and have it running in a couple of hours. All you need is a generator and a Starlink dish to feed the radar’s data back to a computer.

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