Image recognition onboard satellites

Part 2: The EO instrument (features and what to consider)

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I’m creating three summaries of a single paper, all focused on launching artificial intelligence models onboard small satellites. We’re in the second part of this three part series, the first of which can be found here. Last week, we looked at some of the challenges that may arise when trying to implement an AI model onboard your small satellite. In this post we talk the design of your EO instrument.

What are the main elements involved when designing an EO satellite? The author categorizes this into these segments:

• Payload

• Mission planning

• Computational Capacity

• Battery consumption

• Uplink and downlink

The elements required to launch a satellite

Mission Planning

Let’s start with mission planning. According to the author: “mission planning of any satellite involves identifying mission objectives, target areas, and data collection requirements.”