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PREPRINT · ACM EUROSYS 2026 UNDER SUBMISSION

StarLoom: resilient control plane for LEO satellite constellations

TODARE RESEARCH · GEORGIA TECH · 2026 Download PDF ↗ Cite
WITHOUT ISOLATION
WITH STARLOOM
100% AFFECTED
3% AFFECTED

FIG. 1 — THE SAME BAD CONFIGURATION PUSH, WITH AND WITHOUT FAILURE DOMAINS.

Mega-constellations run thousands of satellites off one shared control plane. One bad configuration push can — and did — take an entire fleet dark. StarLoom partitions the constellation into isolated failure domains and stages every change, so a bad update stops at the domain boundary instead of cascading fleet-wide.

33×
FEWER SATELLITES AFFECTED BY A BAD UPDATE
265×
FASTER RECOVERY IN CONTROL FAILURES
3%
OF THE FLEET EXPOSED, INSTEAD OF ALL OF IT
01 · THE FAILURE MODE

One shared brain, no firebreaks.

In July 2025, a single configuration push took 8,000 satellites dark for two and a half hours. No rocket failed and no debris struck — one shared control plane pushed one bad change to every node at once. No canary, no staged rollback, nothing to stop a bad node from taking its neighbors with it. As fleets grow toward 10,000+ satellites, that architecture is a standing invitation for the next outage.

02 · THE DESIGN

Isolation as the shape of the control plane.

StarLoom divides a constellation into independent failure domains. Every change rolls out domain by domain — canaried, monitored, reversible. A regression is contained at the boundary: the rest of the constellation keeps flying while one domain rolls back. Isolation isn't a feature bolted on after the outage; it's the structure of the system.

03 · THE NUMBERS

Measured on real orbits.

Every figure is measured, not modeled for convenience: real orbital mechanics of Starlink, Kuiper and Telesat, roughly 600,000 simulated routes, and failure injection across the control and data planes. A bad update under StarLoom reaches 3% of the fleet instead of all of it — 33× fewer satellites affected — and control-plane failures recover 265× faster.

04 · WHY IT MATTERS

Resilience is the product.

An open constellation only works if no tenant can inherit another's failure. StarLoom is the isolation layer under the ToDare cloud — the reason any operator can plug in, sell compute, and trust that someone else's bad day stays theirs.

CITE THIS PAPER
@unpublished{starloom2026,
  title = {StarLoom: Resilient Control Plane for LEO Satellite Constellations},
  year  = {2026},
  note  = {Under submission, ACM EuroSys 2026}
}
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