SpaceX's Starlink satellites now help track lost dogs in remote areas

SpaceX's Starlink satellites have spent years beaming internet to remote corners of the world, reaching places where cellular towers never will. Now they're doing something simpler and more intimate: helping people find their lost dogs.

Fi, a pet technology company based in New York, launched the Fi Ultra tracker on July 8, a device that taps into Starlink's constellation of nearly 11,000 satellites to locate dogs in wilderness areas and rural regions where traditional GPS trackers go silent. The problem it solves is real enough. A dog owner can buy a standard GPS tracker, clip it to a collar, and feel reasonably safe—until the animal wanders into a canyon, a forest, or any of the vast stretches of America where cell towers don't reach. At that point, the tracker becomes useless. It knows where the dog is, but it can't tell the owner.

The Fi Ultra works differently. It uses T-Mobile's T-Satellite network, which is powered by Starlink's satellite infrastructure, to send location data from anywhere in the continental United States, even places with zero cellular coverage. The device itself costs $199, with an annual membership starting at $189 for new subscribers. Existing Fi customers can upgrade for a flat $299 fee. The tracker fits standard dog harnesses and collars, and beyond location updates, it sends notifications when a dog leaves a designated area and includes a training feature using sound and vibrations to call the animal back.

Fi's co-founder and CEO Jonathan Bensamoun framed the product as an extension of the company's core mission: strengthening the bond between humans and their dogs by giving animals more freedom while keeping them safe. The company claims Fi Ultra is the first dog tracker to use satellite connectivity at all, a distinction that matters in a market where GPS trackers have been around for years but have always been tethered to the limits of ground-based networks.

Starlink itself is SpaceX's satellite internet business, launched by Elon Musk's company in 2002. The service became available to consumers about five years ago and now serves more than 7 million people across 150 countries. What makes Starlink different from older satellite internet is that SpaceX owns and operates the Falcon 9 rocket, a reusable two-stage vehicle 230 feet tall, capable of deploying satellites into low-Earth orbit. That lower altitude—closer to the atmosphere than traditional satellites—means faster connection speeds and better coverage in rural areas.

California plays a crucial role in this infrastructure. SpaceX regularly launches Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base on the Central Coast, a practice that began in 2021. The company also launches from Florida, at both Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Each launch adds to the constellation, which has grown from the first deployment in 2019 to nearly 11,000 satellites today. SpaceX has plans to deploy even larger Starlink satellites using its Starship rocket, suggesting the network will only expand.

The Fi Ultra tracker represents a small but telling shift in how satellite infrastructure gets used. For years, Starlink's main story was about connecting the unconnected—bringing broadband to rural communities, disaster zones, and developing nations. Now the same technology is being repurposed for consumer applications that feel almost mundane by comparison. A dog owner in the Sierra Nevada or the Mojave Desert can now have the same peace of mind as someone in a city with full cellular coverage. It's a reminder that the most transformative technologies often find their most useful applications in the smallest, most personal moments of daily life.