From NASA1’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory2 comes fascinating news: In mid-July, NASA researchers demonstrated a new “dynamic targeting” technology that enables a satellite to autonomously “look ahead” along its orbit to determine the optimal direction to aim its sensors for data collection. For example, it can focus on interesting portions of the observable swath or collect data only where clouds do not obscure the view. Notably, this demonstration required no human intervention at any stage.
From the announcement:
“The idea is to make the spacecraft act more like a human: Instead of just seeing data, it’s thinking about what the data shows and how to respond,” says Steve Chien, a technical fellow in AI at JPL and principal investigator for the Dynamic Targeting project.
The demonstration used a briefcase-size cube sat launched in 2024. Since the test satellite lacked a dedicated look-ahead sensor, the spacecraft was periodically tilted forward. Once look-ahead imagery had been captured, onboard edge computing classified the scene and adjusted subsequent data-gathering accordingly. More details are available from a conceference paper.
Interesting times indeed!