In 2018, after decades of research and tens of millions in funding, Russian astronauts attached a wildlife-tracking receiver to the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS). The device received data from tagged animals across the planet and beamed it to a ground station in Moscow. From there, it went to an open-source database called Movebank. The space tracker was the final piece of the puzzle for the ICARUS project, an international effort led by German biologist Martin Wikelski to track the migratory patterns of wildlife from space.