PARIS – In six months, Portuguese startup NeuraSpace has gone from 25 to 250 satellites on its space traffic management platform.
“For NeuraSpace, the ball is rolling,” Chiara Manfletti, NeuraSpace chief operating officer, told on the World Satellite Business Week conference here.
The newest customer is South Africa’s Dragonfly Aerospace. Dragonfly announced plans Sept. 11 to depend on NeuraSpace for conjunction evaluation and maneuver suggestions for Dragonfly’s EOS SAT-1. EOS-SAT-1 is the primary of seven satellites Dragonfly plans to launch to assemble agriculture and forestry data.
“For us to partner with Dragonfly, a very industrial company, where they see added value in our product, that is implausible,” Manfletti said.
Dragonfly CEO Bryan Dean said in a press release, “The partnership between Dragonfly Aerospace and Neuraspace represents a vital step forward in our commitment to sustainable space exploration. We’re excited to leverage the Neuraspace STM platform to make sure the security and increased operational efficiency and longevity of EOS SAT-1.”
AI and Machine Learning
NeuraSpace, founded in 2020, offers satellite collision avoidance systems supported by artificial intelligence and machine learning.
For space traffic management, “there isn’t a single source of information which is almighty,” Manfletti said. “You’ll only have great insight if you bring different sources of information together. That philosophy implies that we’re at all times hungry for data that may give us an edge in resolving the pain of a customer.”
NeuraSpace is “slowly but surely seeing how machine learning can bring advantages to advancing and automating processes, data science and data mining,” Manfletti said.
Automation is one other pillar of NeuraSpace’s business.
“I strongly consider in moving towards autonomous spacecraft,” Manfletti said. “We wish to optimize using resources and help satellites protect themselves without the human oversight 24/7.”