SN Military.Space | AI race moves to space • China’s heavy rockets a concern for U.S. • Soldiers learn to operate satellites

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Artificial intelligence race moving to space, AI boom underway ‘just the tip of the iceberg’

Using free data from the European Space Agency, a startup in Finland created a geospatial information service that is entirely enabled by artificial intelligence. AI algorithms are used to remove clouds and track changes in structures on the ground. The service, targeted at government agencies and industries like agriculture and infrastructure, costs about $4,000 a year. It is free to researchers studying the impact of natural disasters.

Joni Norppa, CEO and co-founder of the startup, named Terramonitor, says the current AI boom is only the tip of the iceberg. “We’re just beginning our mission to democratize space data,” he tells SpaceNews.
“There is lot of interest in remote-sensing data for operational use,” Norppa said. “With machine learning and AI, you don’t need any human labor to do that.”
Today only a fraction of the available space data is operationalized. One of the obstacles is that almost every image is covered by clouds. ...