“The way we act in space is the way we should act in the neighborhood: Act responsibly, don’t litter, and pick up your trash,” said Darren McKnight, senior technical fellow at Leolabs, a private company that tracks objects in space and helps satellite operators steer away from possible crashes.Though the Department of Defense had long been interested in the idea of small satellite constellations, it was only when these companies started to link lots of them together — to do the same kinds of jobs that the military had been doing — like taking snapshots of Earth, or providing data connectivity — that the military began to seriously pursue them.“If they can build hundreds to potentially thousands of spacecraft, and do so at a point where they can offer a commercially compelling service, then the DOD should also look at how they can do that,” said Stephen Forbes, Blackjack’s current program manager.“There was a lot of hesitancy within the department to do this huge shift in architectures,” said Derek Tournear, current director of the Space Development Agency, “from the Battlestar Galactica — very expensive, exquisite satellites” to herds of interlinked smaller ones.Within the Air Force, in particular, then-Secretary Heather Wilson publicly questioned whether constellations were as capable and hardy as their bigger and more complex forebears, particularly for missions like missile-warning and navigation."