CEDAR PARK, Texas - Firefly Aerospace, a Cedar Park, Texas-based space and defense technology company, announced a collaboration with NVIDIA in Santa Clara, Calif., to enable rapid on-orbit processing in lunar orbit for Firefly’s Ocula Moon imaging service.
As part of the collaboration, an NVIDIA Jetson module has been integrated into the onboard processing architecture supporting high-resolution optical payloads developed in collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Related: Firefly Aerospace unveils commercial lunar imaging service
Commercial lunar operations
Firefly’s Ocula service is expected to be activated onboard its Elytra orbital vehicle during the company’s second mission to the Moon, Blue Ghost Mission 2, targeted to launch no earlier than late 2026. Elytra is designed to first serve as a transfer vehicle and long-haul communications relay for Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, then remain operational in lunar orbit for approximately five years, capturing continuous imagery to support lunar surface mapping, mineral detection, and reconnaissance.
"Ocula is set to be the first commercial lunar imaging and mapping service available on the market, and it is coming at a critical time when other government-owned satellites in lunar orbit are nearing end of life," said Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly Aerospace. "Now through our collaboration with NVIDIA, Ocula will be powered by the world’s leading edge AI processor. This capability allows us to layer on our SciTec AI software as the 'brains' that give customers real-time data-driven insights from the Moon."
Edge processing
Data collected by Ocula will be processed onboard Elytra and transmitted back to Earth using the NVIDIA Jetson module combined with Firefly’s AI software developed by its SciTec subsidiary. This approach is intended to mitigate bandwidth and latency constraints in deep-space communications by enabling data reduction and analysis prior to downlink, providing near real-time, actionable insights for government and commercial users.
"Modern space missions generate massive volumes of data that require immediate processing to overcome the latency and bandwidth constraints of deep-space communications," said Deepu Talla, vice president of Robotics and Edge AI at NVIDIA. "Integrating the NVIDIA Jetson platform into Firefly’s Elytra spacecraft enables autonomous on-orbit AI processing that transforms raw lunar imagery into actionable insights in real time."
Firefly says its AI-enabled software will also support advanced space domain awareness capabilities in lunar orbit. The system is designed to use onboard data fusion and machine learning algorithms, previously applied in national security missions in Earth orbit, to help track objects and provide situational awareness of activity in the cislunar domain.
Following Blue Ghost Mission 2, Firefly is under contract to deploy two additional Elytra vehicles to lunar orbit as part of Blue Ghost Mission 3 and Mission 4, with the goal of improving revisit rates for lunar mapping, resource detection, and space domain awareness.
