WorldFloods on D-Orbit's Wild Ride mission
Produced flood maps on board from images, and was updated from the ground after launch to suit the satellite's own camera.
| Operator | D-Orbit (the satellite) |
|---|---|
| Developer | Trillium Technologies and the University of Oxford, with D-Orbit, Unibap and ESA Φ-lab |
| Host | ION SCV Dauntless David |
| Where | Earth orbit |
| Class | perception |
| Hardware | A quad-core x86 processor with an Intel Movidius Myriad X |
| Model or software | WorldFloods, a segmentation model that maps flood water |
| Launched | 30 Jun 2021 |
| Ran | after June 2021; not dated in the parts read |
| Ended | 8 Dec 2024 |
| Catalogue | ION SCV-003, number 48912; matched by launch date: the only ION carrier in the catalogue launched on 30 June 2021, the date the paper gives; the reviewer's judgement |
What was said, and by whom
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“In this work we demonstrate, in a satellite deployed in orbit, a ML payload called 'WorldFloods' that is able to send compressed flood maps from sensed images.”
Mateo-Garcia et al., the experiment's team: the experimenter. In-orbit demonstration of a re-trainable machine learning payload for processing optical imagery, Scientific Reports (Mateo-Garcia and co-authors, the experiment's team). Published 27 Jun 2023 (page metadata). Read 4 Oct 2026, in part: about twenty sentences of 56,100 characters.
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“For the first time, we demonstrate a successful update of the ML model to adapt it to this camera after the satellite was launched.”
Mateo-Garcia et al., the experiment's team: the experimenter. In-orbit demonstration of a re-trainable machine learning payload for processing optical imagery, Scientific Reports (Mateo-Garcia and co-authors, the experiment's team). Published 27 Jun 2023 (page metadata). Read 4 Oct 2026, in part: about twenty sentences of 56,100 characters.
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“offering a quad-core x86 64-bit processor, a Microsemi SmartFusion2 FPGA and an Intel Movidius Myriad X Vision Processing Unit (VPU)”
Mateo-Garcia et al., the experiment's team: the experimenter. In-orbit demonstration of a re-trainable machine learning payload for processing optical imagery, Scientific Reports (Mateo-Garcia and co-authors, the experiment's team). Published 27 Jun 2023 (page metadata). Read 4 Oct 2026, in part: about twenty sentences of 56,100 characters.
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“The D-Orbit Wild Ride mission for the carrier ION SCV Dauntless David successfully launched into LEO on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on June 30th 2021”
Mateo-Garcia et al., the experiment's team: the experimenter. In-orbit demonstration of a re-trainable machine learning payload for processing optical imagery, Scientific Reports (Mateo-Garcia and co-authors, the experiment's team). Published 27 Jun 2023 (page metadata). Read 4 Oct 2026, in part: about twenty sentences of 56,100 characters.
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OBJECT_NAME: ION SCV-003; LAUNCH_DATE: 2021-06-30; DECAY_DATE: 2024-12-08
CelesTrak satellite catalogue: a public catalogue. Satellite catalogue record 48912 (ION SCV-003), CelesTrak. Published undated (a live catalogue record; dated by when it was read). Read 4 Oct 2026, in full.
Claims to a first
- First model updated on a satellite after launch: contested. OPS-SAT's team reported models trained on board in April 2021. Whether training a model in orbit and replacing one from the ground are the same first is a matter of definition, and the dates of the update are not in the parts read.
Notes
Peer reviewed, and written by the people who ran the experiment, so it counts as their own technical account. The paper does not use the catalogue's name for the satellite; the match rests on the launch date.
Changed
Added on 4 October 2026, in the second round of reading.
Cite or share
WorldFloods on D-Orbit's Wild Ride mission. Every AI that has run above the Kármán line, graded by evidence. Reviewed 4 Oct 2026. https://karman-si.pages.dev/r/worldfloods-wild-ride/
Address: https://karman-si.pages.dev/r/worldfloods-wild-ride/
A badge with this record's marks, at /badge/worldfloods-wild-ride.svg. This record as data.