The company has been going from strength to strength, showing that Ireland punches well above its weight in the space-tech arena.
Many astronauts who travel to space and are able to look back at the Earth from this incredibly unique vantage point experience a transformative shift in their consciousness.
They see our planet for what it is: a borderless, fragile orb intrinsically connected by and reliant on all life forms on it. This is known as the overview effect, coined by space philosopher and author Frank White.
I think of this often when writing about Earth observation, which is the process of gathering information about the Earth’s surface, waters and atmosphere. This is carried out both on the ground and in the skies above, using satellites rather than humans.
And while the satellites themselves obviously can’t ‘feel’ the overview effect, they can give us the opportunity to paint that vital big picture using intricate details gleaned from the data they deliver.
Here on Earth, Ireland stands confidently on the global stage among other strong space players. Despite the country’s size, it has produced impressive technology, start-ups and research that furthers our understanding of Earth using space technology.
But when we focus specifically on Ireland’s mark on the Earth observation arena, Dublin-based space-tech company Ubotica is the player that comes to mind.
Ubotica is based at Dublin City University’s research and innovation campus, DCU Alpha. The company enables satellites with AI to make them capable of Earth observation, essentially turning them into smart satellites.
Since it was founded, the space-tech start-up has had a string of success stories, including striking a partnership with IBM and forming a corporate entity in the US to expand its presence in the country.
Last year, it successfully launched its CogniSAT-6 satellite as part of its mission to improve Earth observation services and it also joined Meseo, a Horizon Europe-backed project to develop a scalable multi-mission Earth observation system that can support large-scale data processing.
Working with unknown unknowns
Sean Mitchell, Ubotica’s chief commercial officer spoke to me at the annual Midas conference in November 2024 about the company and the challenges that come with space-tech.
He pointed out that despite all of the advancements in deep tech, “space stuff is still really hard and really unpredictable”.
“On the technology front, we had to spend a few years really proving that the technology could not just function technically but actually survive in the harsh environments of space and radiation conditions, the launch conditions and so on,” he said.
“But we’ve kind of gotten through that, we’ve proven that they can work, the systems that are really commercial off-the-shelf systems, but they can survive and for the length of time of the missions.”
The job of making sure the equipment can withstand the conditions for the amount of time they need comes from years of testing, where engineers will characterise how these off-the-shelf systems will perform in certain conditions and work out how much shielding it needs to protect it and essentially make it space ready. This is easier for lower Earth orbits as the conditions are much less aggressive than higher up.
However, the unpredictable nature of space means that even in this situation, strange stuff can happen, such as when a recent Ubotica mission came up against the South Atlantic Anomaly.
“It’s a high radiation zone and with the recent sunspot activity it’s particularly aggressive right now and it did cause an upset on the spacecraft,” said Mitchell. “We joke that it actually turned it into kind of a time machine – it confused the GPS system; it thought the year was 2070 and so it started the spacecraft tumbling and so on. Thankfully, we were able to recover it.”
From gathering data to using it
Earth observation data has several use cases, from predicting future diseases and pandemics to monitoring natural disasters and providing valuable data on the climate crisis.
And while a major challenge for space companies like Ubotica revolves around getting equipment up there, the next step is actually being able to harness the data, build interest and navigate the typical Earth-bound commercial reality of navigating a go-to-market strategy.
“I think the big thing for us is that the space data at the moment is quite inaccessible. It’s expensive, it takes a couple days to get it, it’s a very technical thing to try and interpret images,” said Mitchell.
“But if you think about what people really need, it’s intelligence for whatever their business problem is and they need it at an affordable level, in a timely manner and then in a digestible form so that’s the challenge for us is to turn this into something that people can use.”
Ireland on a global stage
Mitchell’s own background encompasses 35 years in the semiconductor industry, another key area Ireland succeeds in, so it’s no surprise that he said the country has become somewhat of a powerhouse in the modern-day space race.
Recent successes beyond Ubotica include multiple Irish inputs to the historic James Webb Space Telescope, the launch of its first satellite EIRSAT-1 in 2023 and vital Cork-made tech aboard the ESA Proba-3 mission.
“Definitely the ecosystem is really developing quite strongly now. I think it’s probably fair to say we’re punching above our weight in terms of partnerships with, say, the European Space Agency and things like that and really working on quite advanced technologies across a whole range of areas,” he said.
“Enabling the new systems takes innovation in lots of different areas, not just things like the AI processing, but you have to couple that with sensors, with communications, networking, there’s a whole lot of things that go around it so it’ll be really exciting to see lots of different technology areas where people are getting engaged in the space market.”
Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.
