COLORADO SPRINGS – Aitech Systems, a California company known for military and aerospace electronics, revealed plans for a picosatellite that will be used for artificial-intelligence applications.
The company announced the satellite, known as IQSat, April 7 at the 40th Space Symposium.
“IQSat will be able to do pattern-of-life recognition right out of the box,” Pratish Shah, Aitech’s U.S. general manager, told SpaceNews. “It is going to open up a wide range of applications.”
Constellations of IQSats could, for example, detect space debris, observe terrestrial activity or monitor electronic signals.
IQSat incorporates Intuidex Watchman for Space, an analytics platform with AI and machine-learning algorithms, for terrestrial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance or space-domain awareness.
Prior to the announcement, an unnamed customer began working with Aitech on a constellation of hundreds of IQsats. The first IQSats, measuring 10 by 10 by 30 centimeters, are set to launch in the first quarter of 2026.
Scales of efficiency
Aitech engineers created IQSat after noticing that many of their customers needed the same commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) satellite parts.
Rather than building unique satellite platforms, IQSat is a “commoditized COTS-like platform that allows users to leverage space-based capabilities without the expense and without the deep space knowledge,” Shah said. “We want to provide a platform that can be rapidly prototyped and launched and be functional in space.”
Customers can start designing IQSat missions in the fourth quarter. In addition to IQSat’s standard COTS components, customers have options for electric propulsion systems and radios.
Aitech has been contacted by customers interested in IQSat for military space, scientific and commercial applications. A proposed commercial application for the one-kilogram satellite bus is monitoring temperature, radiation, micrometeorite impacts and material degradation of space habitats, Shah said.
