When SpaceX regularly launches Starlink satellites into space, it’s not uncommon for Colorado Springs area residents to see the roughly 20 dots of light streaking across the night sky.

The inevitable question of “What are these lights?” pops up on Reddit, Facebook and social media. A local company, Citra Space, is building a tool to answer that question. The product is envisioned as Flightaware for space objects, one investor said at the recent grand opening of the company’s headquarters off Garden of the Gods Road.

As interesting as that may be for civilians wondering exactly what is flying overhead, the service could fill a strategic gap in the United States’ overall space domain awareness. By and large, the military can track the nearly 35,000 objects orbiting Earth, but that’s half the battle, said Citra co-founder Tom Nichols, an Air Force and Space Force veteran.

Of the 35,000 objects, Nichols said China launched 1,065. And the U.S. knows very little about them, he said.

“We know it’s a Chinese object, we just don’t know what the capabilities are,” he said. “And the government currently doesn’t have the resources to actually spend to go and identify what these things are.” 

As China’s space ambitions grow and it makes technological advances in rocket and satellite technologies, the United States is trying to maintain what President Donald Trump, NASA and the military call “space dominance.” Ensuring that requires space object identification as part of the broader space domain awareness.

Citra builds hardware and software to make identification and capability analysis easier. One of its products is a telescope modified to capture hyperspectral images of spacecraft. It can determine which wavelengths of light are absorbed by a specific object and which ones are reflected. 

NASA uses a similar method to identify exoplanets, but here the reflection and absorption data could be used to identify, track and categorize space objects. That would allow Citra Space, and by extension the military, to better understand the objects’ possible capabilities.

“Citra is helping us address a pretty critical blind spot (in space),” said U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank, R-Colorado Springs. “We have made a lot of great progress in the last 10 years on tracking space objects, but we still lack the ability to confidently identify what we’re tracking.”

This capabilities gap frustrated Nichols and other Space Force Guardians he worked with during his military career. Citra’s work has caught the eyes of investors as well.

In April, the company raised $15 million in a series A funding, a second round of funding for a startup that moves it beyond the seeding phase.

Andrew Ramsey, a former Air Force Academy hockey player who works at the investment firm Hirtle, Callaghan & Co., is an investor in Citra Space. Nichols and Citra’s other founders made him confident in the company’s potential and its people, he said.

“When you realize the lock to your back door is broken, you’re like ‘I want to figure out how to fix that problem,’” he said. “Any time you get a good entrepreneur fixing a problem that they’ve identified because of their deep domain expertise, that’s a compelling opportunity to seek growth in a business, but also better defense coverage for your country.”