Satellite sensors collect an incredible amount of raw data, but due to on-orbit computational limitations, operators have little way to process this data in space.
Aethero, a startup founded 13 months ago, wants to change that. The startup is developing radiation-hardened edge computers that enable data processing and even autonomous decision-making in orbit.
“Right now, space data preprocessing is the bigger market, but as the year goes on and we have more assets in orbit, we expect enabling spacecraft autonomy to become a large-scale thing.” ,” said co-founder and CEO Edward Gee. In a recent interview.
Ge co-founded Aethero with Amit Pinnamaneni. The two grew up together in the same small town in Michigan and in 2020 founded Stratodyne, a startup that makes high-altitude balloons for remote sensing. The company was accepted into Y Combinator's Winter 2022 cohort, but had to decline. The restrictions were lifted due to legal issues related to a set of government import and export regulations known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations.
The two returned to the University of Michigan. Pinnamaneni started in a graduate program researching embedded systems in harsh environments such as high-radiation spaceflight environments. So he and his Ge began developing the hardware that would eventually become his Aethero.
Although high-altitude balloons may not seem to have a direct connection to computing hardware in orbit, Ge said both ventures face similar issues. Current space computers use older field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) with older architectures. This cannot handle computationally intensive tasks like training models in orbit or deploying advanced computer vision models in orbit.
“We realized that the problem was that we couldn't get enough data from space. […] The challenge is first to get data from sensors in space fast enough to the end user, and second, to enable satellites in orbit to make real-time decisions on their own. ”
“Ultimately, spacecraft need the ability to make real-time decisions in their location, rather than being forever dependent on mission control,” he added.
Aethero, powered by a $1.7 million pre-seed round that closed last fall, has ambitious plans to bring such capabilities to life. The startup's first generation space computer is called his AetherNxN and is based on Nvidia Orin processors. Ge says Orin is his GPU edge processor, the best currently on the market, and using proven hardware will help the startup take off. It is designed to last for 7 to 10 years in low Earth orbit and can be installed on a platform as small as a CubeSat. According to Ge, this will provide more than 20 times more processing power than existing options.
Aethero plans to release larger second-generation modules for larger spacecraft before moving to its own space processors. The company says there are several benefits to switching to its own domain-specific processors, including lower power consumption and faster performance. The San Francisco-based startup aims to manufacture it in conjunction with computing giant Intel around 2026, but that depends on many variables, Ge said.
The five-person team will send MVP into space three times this year. One of the missions will launch on SpaceX's Transporter-11 in June of this year and will demonstrate the product's ability to work in space, delivering over-the-air updates to onboard computer vision models and the ability to train computer vision models. Demonstrate functions such as in space using data collected by the same spacecraft.
Although Ge could not discuss conversations with customers, he said Aethero is aware of specific demand themes from the Earth observation market, on-orbit service providers, and commercial space stations. He said the ISS generates terabytes of data every day, and edge computing has the potential to process even larger amounts of data.
“We see ourselves as the Intel or Nvidia of the space industry,” he said.