V-Nova’s SMPTE VC-6 ST 2117 data coding standard is heading into space to help demonstrate next generation hyper-spectral imaging from Polar orbit.
The company is working with in-orbit transportation company D-Orbit on the project, which will demonstrate compression methods and algorithms and look at Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) standards for emerging data-driven commercial services from space.
VC-6’s AI-powered software library will be integrated into Unibap’s SpaceCloud computing platform onboard D-Orbit’s ION SCV Dauntless David spacecraft which is scheduled for launch this month.
According to V-Nova, the codec optimises the use of contended downlinks by progressively downloading high quality (even lossless) lower resolutions, allowing early access of images to the user, then providing higher resolutions with no redundant data until the full resolution is available.
Alternatively, if a Region of Interest (RoI) of the image is required, only the high resolution of the RoI is downloaded. All these actions can be automated by computer vision on the ground, working in tandem with computer vision algorithms.
Guido Meardi, CEO and co-founder, V-Nova said, “This extremely important and exciting project highlights the diversity of high-tech industries which V-Nova is able to help innovate. The fact that VC-6 is able to prioritize transmission of sections of an image in high-resolution is a big advantage since it means the platform need only invest resources into the precise parts of the image that are required at any time. The majority of uses of the imagery from these missions is for scientific use requiring lossless encoding. Being able to compress with low complexity and accelerate the download will allow space systems to become more agile. V-Nova is proud to work with D-Orbit and Unibap towards the development of more efficient satellite imagery systems.”
