On 28 November 2025, the first satellite of ICARUS 2.0 launched into orbit. Within months, more will follow — including a National Geographic Society-funded satellite launching this month. The goal of this extraordinary project: create a real-time global tracking network for thousands of wild animals, advance conservation science, and — potentially — let animals warn humanity of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and pandemics before scientists can detect them.
ICARUS — the International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space — has been one of the most ambitious wildlife science initiatives ever conceived. Its original phase operated from the International Space Station between 2020 and 2022, before hardware issues forced a pause. ICARUS 2.0 is the reimagined, more powerful, satellite-based revival.
**What ICARUS Actually Does**
Animals of almost any size — birds, sea turtles, sharks, bats, even insects — can be fitted with miniature solar-powered transmitters. The current generation weighs as little as 5 grams; researchers are developing sub-1-gram versions that would allow even small songbirds to carry them without any burden.
These transmitters send continuous GPS location data — and crucially, environmental sensor readings — up to the ICARUS satellites passing overhead. Scientists on the ground receive real-time feeds of where each tagged animal is, how fast it's moving, what temperatures and pressures it's experiencing, and whether its behaviour is unusual.
The data goes into Movebank, an open global repository of animal movement data, where conservation researchers worldwide can access it freely.
**The Constellation Takes Shape**
The first ICARUS 2.0 instrument launched aboard the GENA-OT satellite — an ESA-supported technology demonstration — on 28 November 2025. A second independent ICARUS receiver, built through a collaboration between the Max Planck Society and the space company Talos, is scheduled to launch in the coming months. The National Geographic Society-funded satellite is planned for launch this March 2026.
By mid-2027, the plan is to have six ICARUS receivers operational in low Earth orbit. With six satellites, coverage becomes near-continuous: an animal tagged anywhere on Earth would be visible to the network multiple times per day, rather than only when a single satellite happens to pass overhead.
**Can Animals Predict Disasters?**
This is the part of ICARUS that most captures the imagination — and the part that is most carefully being tested scientifically.
Anecdotal reports going back centuries suggest that animals sometimes behave unusually before earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, or major storms. Farm animals become agitated; flocks of birds take flight; dogs refuse to go outside. The challenge has always been that these accounts are retrospective — noticed after the disaster struck, not before.
ICARUS provides, for the first time, a prospective dataset: continuous, global, timestamped records of animal behaviour across thousands of species simultaneously. If goats in an earthquake zone consistently move away from the epicentre hours before a seismic event, ICARUS will catch it. If migratory birds deviate from established flyways before a disease outbreak, the data will show it.
Lead researcher Martin Wikelski of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior has spent decades pursuing this question. He describes animals as 'bioindicators' — living sensors attuned to environmental changes that human instruments often can't detect until it's too late.
Whether animals reliably predict disasters is a scientific question that ICARUS is uniquely positioned to answer. The answer might be no — or it might reshape emergency preparedness worldwide.
**The Conservation Impact**
Even without the disaster-prediction angle, ICARUS has transformative value for conservation. Understanding migration routes — the entire, complicated, seasonal journeys of species from nesting grounds to wintering areas — is essential for identifying which habitats must be protected, which stopover points are critical, and where human activity is breaking crucial connections.
Disease transmission via wildlife movement is another application. Tracking where birds carrying avian influenza travel, in real time, would allow public health authorities to respond faster and more precisely than current monitoring allows.
The ICARUS constellation is, in a meaningful sense, the first attempt to truly understand the living world at a global scale — not by studying species in isolation, but by watching the entire web of life move simultaneously, in real time, from space.
The animals have always known things we didn't. For the first time, we're building the tools to actually listen. 🛰️🐦
*Sources: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior · National Geographic Society · ESA · Mongabay · Yale Environment 360 · ICARUS Initiative (icarus.mpg.de)*
