First On-Orbit Demonstration of a Geospatial Foundation Model

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Du, Andrew, Del Prete, Roberto, Mousist, Alejandro, Manser, Nick, Marre, Fabrice, Barton, Andrew, Seubert, Carl, Meoni, Gabriele, Chin, Tat-Jun
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Du, Andrew
Del Prete, Roberto
Mousist, Alejandro
Manser, Nick
Marre, Fabrice
Barton, Andrew
Seubert, Carl
Meoni, Gabriele
Chin, Tat-Jun
author_facet Du, Andrew
Del Prete, Roberto
Mousist, Alejandro
Manser, Nick
Marre, Fabrice
Barton, Andrew
Seubert, Carl
Meoni, Gabriele
Chin, Tat-Jun
contents Geospatial foundation models (GeoFMs) promise broad generalisation capacity for Earth observation (EO) tasks, particularly under data-limited conditions. However, their large size poses a barrier to deployment on resource-constrained space hardware. To address this, we present compact variants of a Vision Transformer (ViT)-based GeoFM that preserve downstream task performance while enabling onboard execution. Evaluation across five downstream tasks and validation in two representative flight environments show that model compression and domain adaptation are critical to reducing size and resource demands while maintaining high performance under operational conditions. We further demonstrate reliable on-orbit inference with the IMAGIN-e payload aboard the International Space Station. These results establish a pathway from large GeoFMs to flight-ready, resource-efficient deployments, expanding the feasibility of onboard AI for EO missions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_01181
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle First On-Orbit Demonstration of a Geospatial Foundation Model
Du, Andrew
Del Prete, Roberto
Mousist, Alejandro
Manser, Nick
Marre, Fabrice
Barton, Andrew
Seubert, Carl
Meoni, Gabriele
Chin, Tat-Jun
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Geospatial foundation models (GeoFMs) promise broad generalisation capacity for Earth observation (EO) tasks, particularly under data-limited conditions. However, their large size poses a barrier to deployment on resource-constrained space hardware. To address this, we present compact variants of a Vision Transformer (ViT)-based GeoFM that preserve downstream task performance while enabling onboard execution. Evaluation across five downstream tasks and validation in two representative flight environments show that model compression and domain adaptation are critical to reducing size and resource demands while maintaining high performance under operational conditions. We further demonstrate reliable on-orbit inference with the IMAGIN-e payload aboard the International Space Station. These results establish a pathway from large GeoFMs to flight-ready, resource-efficient deployments, expanding the feasibility of onboard AI for EO missions.
title First On-Orbit Demonstration of a Geospatial Foundation Model
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.01181