Apple Inc. has quietly joined the ranks of the Silicon Valley firms working on their own satellite technology, Bloomberg reported today.

The insiders who spoke to the outlet on condition of anonymity said the project is being led by a team inside the iPhone maker with about a dozen members. It’s unclear whether Apple’s plan is to launch satellites into space, or if the company is building ground-based communications hardware to link up to existing satellites in orbit. 

But a lot more information is available about the team behind the project. The tipsters said it’s led by John Fenwick and Mike Trela, two aerospace engineers who joined Apple in 2017 after a stint at Alphabet Inc. leading the search giant’s spacecraft operations and satellite engineering, respectively. Fenwick previously co-founded Skybox Imaging, a startup that designed Earth observation satellites for applications such as weather monitoring.

The engineers are said to have spent their first 18 months at Apple identifying an area where they could apply their expertise and performing feasibility studies. There still isn’t a clear direction for the project, according to the report, but the roadmap is apparently solid enough that Apple now has a specific timeframe in mind. The company reportedly hopes to see results within five years.

Another sign of Apple’s commitment to the project is that it has made several key additions to the satellite team recently. Among the new hires is prominent wireless communications engineer Matt Ettus, former Aerospace Corp. executive Ashley Moore Williams and Daniel Ellis, Netflix Inc.’s onetime head of content delivery operations.

The report leaves plenty of room for speculation, however. There aren’t any details on Apple’s technical vision for the project except that it involves beaming satellite data to consumer devices, which could mean several things. The iPhone maker might be building observation satellites to enhance Apple Maps, which already uses satellite imagery, or the idea could be to provide some sort of internet service.

If it’s the latter, the push might be related to the company’s growing ambitions in the connected device market. Connected devices such as wearables don’t necessarily require fast download speeds and are sometimes carried by users into areas that lack reliable wireless coverage, which makes them an ideal use case for satellite internet. An orbital satellite network could enable Apple to provide web access globally for partner-developed and homegrown devices, such as the smart glasses it’s reportedly developing, without depending on an external provider.

The iPhone maker is far from the first tech giant to have turned its gaze skyward. Amazon.com Inc. this week announced plans to build a satellite factory as part of its Project Kuiper initiative, while Facebook Inc. last year confirmed that it’s working on a low-Earth orbit communications system following media reports. 

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