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 SpaceNews at the World Satellite Business Week conference here.
The latest customer is South Africa’s Dragonfly Aerospace. Dragonfly announced plans Sept. 11 to rely on NeuraSpace for conjunction analysis and maneuver suggestions for Dragonfly’s EOS SAT-1. EOS-SAT-1 is the first of seven satellites Dragonfly plans to launch to gather agriculture and forestry data.
“For us to partner with Dragonfly, a truly commercial company, where they see added value in our product, this is fantastic,” Manfletti said.
Dragonfly CEO Bryan Dean said in a statement, “The partnership between Dragonfly Aerospace and Neuraspace represents a crucial step forward in our commitment to sustainable space exploration. We are excited to leverage the Neuraspace STM platform to ensure the safety 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 data which is almighty,” Manfletti said. “You will only have great insight when you bring different sources of data together. That philosophy means that we’re always hungry for data that can give us an edge in resolving the pain of a customer.”
NeuraSpace is “slowly but surely seeing how machine learning can bring benefits to advancing and automating processes, data science and data mining,” Manfletti said.
Automation is another pillar of NeuraSpace’s business.
“I strongly believe in moving towards autonomous spacecraft,” Manfletti said. “We want to optimize the use of resources and help satellites protect themselves without the human oversight 24/7.”