Intel, ESA, and Ubotica launch the first Artificial Intelligence (AI) satellite.

Intel, the European Space Agency (ESA), and Ubotica have launched the first AI satellite directly into Earth's orbit.

The size of the PhiSat-1 is the same as a cereal box and then was ejected coming from a rocket's dispenser together with 45 other satellites. The rocket was launched from Guiana Space Centre on September 2nd.

Intel has built-in its Movidius Myriad 2 Vision Processing Unit (VPU) into PhiSat-1 - enabling considerable amounts of data to be processed on the unit. This will help to stop useless data from being delivered back to Earth and consuming precious bandwidth.

Around 30% of data savings are expected by using AI at the advantage of the PhiSat-1.

PhiSat-1 is currently in a sun-synchronous orbit around 530 km (329 miles) above Earth and traveling at more than 17,000mph (27,500kmph).

PhiSat-2, a successor, is now planned to test much more of these possibilities. PhiSat-2 will even have another Myriad 2.

Myriad 2 wasn't originally created for use in orbit. Specialist chips that are protected against radiation are generally employed for space missions and could be "up to 2 decades behind state-of-the-art commercial technology," describes Dunne.

Unbelievably, the Myriad two survived 36 straight hours to be blasted with radiation at giving CERN wearing late 2018 without any modifications.

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced that the joint team was "happy to introduce the first-ever hardware-accelerated AI inference of Earth observation pictures on an in-orbit satellite." 

PhiSat-2 and PhiSat-1 are going to be a part of a future community with inter-satellite communication systems.