A Novel Satellite Architecture for the Next Generation of Earth Observation Satellites Supporting Rapid Alerts

The EO-ALERT European Commission H2020 project proposes the definition, development, and verification and validation through ground hardware testing, of a next-generation Earth Observation (EO) data processing chain. The proposed data processing chain is based on a novel flight segment architecture that moves EO data processing elements traditionally executed in the ground segment to on-board the satellite, with the aim of delivering EO products to the end user with very low latency. EO-ALERT achieves, globally, latencies below five minutes for EO products delivery, and below one minute in realistic scenarios. The proposed EO-ALERT architecture is enabled by on-board processing, recent improvements in processing hardware using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components, and persistent space-to-ground communications links. EO-ALERT combines innovations in the on-board elements of the data chain and the communications, namely: on-board reconfigurable data handling, on-board image generation and processing for the generation of alerts (EO products) using Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), on-board AI-based data