By Chris Forrester
Moderator: Ahsun Murad (Cofounder, President and CEO, Optimal Satcom). Optical Satcom was spun-off from Lockheed Martin and Comsat in 2002. Over the last 22 years since its founding, Optimal Satcom has grown to support a large segment of the satellite industry. Mr Murad moderated the Smallsat Europe session at Amsterdam on My 27 and introduced his panel saying that while there was a great deal of hype in AI, there was also a great deal of promise.
The challenges of handling satellite-generated data was, however, immense, said Murad. However, there were environmental risks of handling huge amounts of data in space because of the power likely to be needed.
Rama Afullo (Founder and CEO, Satlyt) based in Silicon Valley and worked at SpaceX and Google said that he was especially excited by the prospects of using GenAI in orbital satellites. He said the technology allowed a number of applications in orbit, including traffic management while in orbit. AI was also very useful in predictive analytics.
Milos Krasojevic (Manager of Product Management for GPU systems, Supermicro). Milos leads EMEA PoC Lab for entire Supermicro portfolio with expertise on AI solutions for specific customer requirements. He told delegates that first the data needed to be generated, and then interpreting that data although then using AI and training AI to further improve the results.
Alessandro Benetton (CTO, AIKO). Turin-based Mr Benetton was selected in Forbes Italy’s ‘30 Under 30 for Science’. He brings a deep passion for innovation and a strong technical backbone in space automation and mission analysis. He told delegates that AIKO was already using AI to extract data from a satellite, and where the satellite was increasingly autonomous and able to achieve its own mission objectives. Indeed, he said that such autonomy was probably vital for the efficient use of a satellite. AI has the benefit of removing or reducing bottlenecks on the satellite. He explained that AIKO was already ‘inferencing’ data.
Alan Campbell (Principal Space Products Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services – AWS) and very much focusing on Satcom, Earth observation and AI/ML space applications. He highlighted that his customers were collecting several Terabytes per day of data, and where generative AI models were already being applied to deliver new insights in flood damage or wildfire assessment. He said he was excited to see the next wave of ML inferencing use-cases at the space edge.
Robert Blamire (Senior Manager, Accenture) and is a 15-year leading staffer and now on Accenture’s space division. Whenever you are dealing with rich data stream AI was increasingly crucial to the efficient use of a satellite.
