SAN FRANCISCO — Australian startup Spiral Blue is inviting developers and researchers to run custom code on its SE-1 space-based computer.
After deploying its own machine-learning algorithms on SE-1, Spiral Blue issued a call Aug. 31 to people fascinated with sending code to space. Applications for the initiative, called Your Code in Space, will be as advanced as applying artificial intelligence to satellite imagery or so simple as making a meme, Mei He, Spiral Blue business development officer, told .
Spiral Blue will reply to proposals submitted through the company’s website with information on how, when and at what cost various codes could run on the SE-1 computer.
“We try to be certain that that it’s as accessible as possible to everyone including students and hobbyists,” He said.
Cropping Clouds
Spiral Blue’s SE-1 payload integrated with the Satellogic spacecraft launched in January on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Sydney-based Spiral Blue announced SE-1’s successful commissioning in April.
Since then, Spiral Blue has tested its own machine-learning algorithms to crop clouds out of satellite imagery on SE-1. Vessel detection algorithms and customer code has also been tested.
“It took us about five years to get our hardware working in orbit,” He said. “Now, we’re capable of help others. We’ve done the labor.”
Spiral Blue suggests Your Code in Space applications like environmental monitoring, disaster response, agricultural insights, urban planning and wildlife conservation.
Your Code in Space is“enabling firms to realize space heritage in a fraction of the normal time by proving to be extremely effective at removing the barriers to running custom analytics in space,” Spiral Blue chief technology officer James Buttenshaw said in a press release.
Henry Zhong, Spiral Blue head of AI, said in a press release, the corporate has “achieved our dual goal of creating our satellite programmable, allowing third parties to run their very own code on-board and drastically reducing data requirements by bringing down just useful insights.”