Case Study: Australian Office of National Intelligence achieves rapid deployment of on-orbit ML-enabled CubeSat Djara with Spire

Australia ONI and Spire Partner to Develop Experimental AI-Powered CubeSat

The Australian Office of National Intelligence engaged with Spire on the NICSAT program to field Djara, a technology-demonstrator satellite for experimenting with commercial on-orbit sensors and advanced machine-learning systems. The challenge was to rapidly develop a capability to collect and analyze data in space using COTS technologies (FPGAs, ML-on-a-chip) to support the Australian National Intelligence Community’s experimentation needs.

Spire designed, built and operated a 3U CubeSat and payload, leveraged its 30+ global ground stations and cloud-based processing and API delivery to downlink, process and distribute the data, and provided satellite operations and systems engineering expertise. The partnership took Djara from contract to launch in 6 months and to full operation in 9 months; the satellite arrived at the ISS on 5 October, was deployed on 5 November, and commissioning is complete with payload operations underway — demonstrating Spire’s ability to rapidly deliver on-orbit ML experimentation with low-latency, high-volume data delivery.

Australian Office of National Intelligence