The latest innovations propelling humanity’s space exploration & geospatial abilities forward

Humanity is constantly trying to make sense of the great beyond, namely space. For this, scientists are hard at work innovating the means to explore space. Last year, British billionaire entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, and American billionaire and Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, created quite a stir by successfully making suborbital space flights.

In November, China’s aerospace ambitions were shown off on the first day of its Zhuhai air show, with the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, Ltd. (COMAC), the Chinese state-owned aerospace manufacturer announcing Air China as the first customer for its C929 widebody jet, while a model of the country’s first commercial uncrewed spaceplane was on display.

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The same month, Japan sent the world’s first wooden satellite to space. This was an early test of using timber in lunar and Mars exploration.

Last October, Inversion Space became the third company to get a spacecraft reentry license from the Federal Aviation Administration, making way for the startup’s tech pathfinder mission for orbital delivery. The startup plans to transform space into a new “transportation layer for Earth” with the help of ultra-fast, on-demand cargo deliveries to anywhere on Earth from orbit. Inversion also has plans to launch a larger vehicle called Arc in 2026, though this will require a separate license. 

Meanwhile, a team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is creating a snake-like robot that can traverse extreme terrain. The autonomous robot, which is self-propelled, is called EELS (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor). The inspiration for this robot (reminds of Dr. Octopus) comes from the desire to look for signs of life in the ocean hiding below the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus by descending narrow vents in the surface that spew geysers into space.

In South Africa, officials and scientists celebrated a milestone towards creating the world’s largest radio astronomy instrument, which is co-hosted with Australia and aims to unlock mysteries of the universe.

In the geo-spatial domain, Ecosia, the non-profit tree-planting search engine, tied up with French startup Kanop’s satellite imagery to monitor 200M+ planted trees from space. Ecosia, is now able to see its reforestation efforts using satellite data and AI. This will ensure successful forest regrowth while boosting transparency, setting a new standard for sustainable nature monitoring.

In May, SkyServe, a space tech and edge computing technology company based in Bengaluru and Cupertino, successfully achieved Smart Earth Imaging in orbit, marking a revolutionary step forward in the field of Earth observation.

A month before, SkyServe collaborated with space logistics company D-Orbit to uplink and test STORM, their edge computing software stack, on a satellite launched by SpaceX in January 2022. Within seconds of capturing a vast area over the Egypt-Sinai Peninsula, STORM performed a range of intelligent tasks on the satellite itself, including correcting errors in the imagery, detecting and removing cloud and water cover, and identifying vegetation.

Following these onboard optimizations, STORM transmitted memory-efficient imaging by 5X, back to Earth.

“We’re essentially creating the iPhone moment for Earth observation,” says Vinay Simha, SkyServe’s Co-founder and CEO, he added, “Just like Smartphones revolutionized data accessibility and enhanced user engagement, STORM hosts and enables geospatial applications with edge tasking and data processing, unlocking a vast array of use cases from space.”

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“We can program the satellites to identify wildfires while flying over regions like Australia and
monitor water resources when they are positioned over Bengaluru,” explains Vishesh Vatsal, SkyServe’s Co-founder and CTO.

SkyServe is also gearing up for Mission K2 scheduled for launch aboard ISRO’s PSLV C59.