ESA and Canadian Space Agency fund NorthStar plan to speed up collision alerts

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) are funding the next phase of NorthStar Earth & Space’s plan to process space surveillance data directly in orbit. The Montreal-based company is developing artificial intelligence software to detect faint objects using onboard satellite computers. This edge computing method processes information in space before sending it to Earth, reducing the time needed to identify potential collision threats. As low-Earth orbit (LEO) becomes increasingly congested, commercial and defence operators need rapid updates to avoid collisions. Traditional space surveillance requires beaming raw images to ground stations for analysis, creating a data bottleneck. Shifting machine learning algorithms directly to the satellite filters out the noise, reducing bandwidth requirements and increasing the network’s overall observation capacity. The initiative draws funding from the ESA space safety program . This financial support is facilitated by Canada’s unique position as the only non-European cooperating state within the agency and the recent large infusion of support from Canada into ESA. Stewart Bain, founder and chief executive officer of NorthStar, noted the software upgrade improves orbital safety and operational efficiency.