Japan · Hosted orbital edge-computing demonstration
JAXA D-OBEC / QPS-SAR12
This project focuses on testing edge computing aboard a host spacecraft.
JAXA’s D-OBEC hosts its H²-OBC computer and a container-based app platform on iQPS’s QPS-SAR12, launched in August 2025. The program supports post-launch AI app deployment. Space Shift reported four successful onboard SAR ship-detection trials in June and July 2026; JAXA selected nine organizations for eleven candidate apps under demonstration agreements.
JAXA / iQPS · In-orbit demonstrations
Scope: Shared computing & storage · A shared computing or storage platform, or a program developing that infrastructure. Classification describes intended use, not operating capacity.
4 TBPlannedD-OBEC published host SSD specification, July 2025Evidence & scope
Preflight technical specification. Includes a 1 TB user area shared by all apps. Does not measure installed current availability or stored customer data; no additional 1 TB metric.
Figures retain their disclosed units and scope. Launched hardware does not establish demonstrated performance; targets may change. Not disclosed means no figure in the reviewed sources.
Program organization: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Supplier selected
Communications
Inmarsat relay was used to deliver D-OBEC ship-identification results to users; JAXA reported average latency of about 14 minutes from observation completion.
Slide 8 establishes use of Inmarsat relay service, not legal procurement buyer or price. No optical-link role is inferred. June 4 is presentation date, and this result predates Space Shift’s June-July trials; it must not be attributed to that app. The original PDF was visually reviewed; automated capture remains separate.
Announced 4 Jun 2026 · Evidence checked 27 Sept 2026
Program organization: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Supplier selected
Processors / accelerators
JAXA’s H²-OBC uses a Unibap iX10 commercial computer modified for the satellite’s thermal, mechanical and electrical environment.
Hardware provenance is explicit on slide 6 of JAXA’s June 4, 2026 status presentation. The flight computer is a JAXA modification of the commercial Unibap iX10. Direct procurement buyer, signing date, price and exact modifications are not disclosed; June 4 is presentation date. The complete original PDF was downloaded and visually reviewed; automated source capture remains separate.
Announced 4 Jun 2026 · Evidence checked 27 Sept 2026
Program organization: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Development agreement
Flight / payload software · Research & feasibility studies
Three selected app proposals: observation-data compression; ship detection with satellite coordination; and SAR interference detection. The source does not establish three separate executed contracts.
JAXA’s selection result reports demonstration agreements with proposers. The call assigns app-development costs to applicants and environment/data/orbital-operation costs to JAXA; it does not establish a paid procurement award. Contract signing dates, value and executed terms are not disclosed. Selection alone does not establish a completed flight experiment. March 2 is the selection-result publication date corroborated by JAXA’s dated program index.
Announced 2 Mar 2026 · Evidence checked 27 Sept 2026
Program organization: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Development agreement
Flight / payload software · Research & feasibility studies
Development of QPS SAR onboard AI for rapid urban-flood detection and wide-area monitoring.
JAXA’s selection result reports demonstration agreements with proposers. The call assigns app-development costs to applicants and environment/data/orbital-operation costs to JAXA; it does not establish a paid procurement award. Contract signing dates, value and executed terms are not disclosed. Selection alone does not establish a completed flight experiment. March 2 is the selection-result publication date corroborated by JAXA’s dated program index.
Announced 2 Mar 2026 · Evidence checked 27 Sept 2026
Program organization: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Development agreement
Flight / payload software · Research & feasibility studies
Development of SAR-ResQ, an onboard AI app for early identification of buildings at risk of collapse.
JAXA’s selection result reports demonstration agreements with proposers. The call assigns app-development costs to applicants and environment/data/orbital-operation costs to JAXA; it does not establish a paid procurement award. Contract signing dates, value and executed terms are not disclosed. Selection alone does not establish a completed flight experiment. March 2 is the selection-result publication date corroborated by JAXA’s dated program index.
Announced 2 Mar 2026 · Evidence checked 27 Sept 2026
Program organization: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Development agreement
Flight / payload software · Research & feasibility studies
Research into vessel-class identification using onboard AI logic on SAR satellite data.
JAXA’s selection result reports demonstration agreements with proposers. The call assigns app-development costs to applicants and environment/data/orbital-operation costs to JAXA; it does not establish a paid procurement award. Contract signing dates, value and executed terms are not disclosed. Selection alone does not establish a completed flight experiment. March 2 is the selection-result publication date corroborated by JAXA’s dated program index.
Announced 2 Mar 2026 · Evidence checked 27 Sept 2026
Program organization: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Development agreement
Flight / payload software · Research & feasibility studies
Development of an onboard SAR application for real-time port monitoring.
JAXA’s selection result reports demonstration agreements with proposers. The call assigns app-development costs to applicants and environment/data/orbital-operation costs to JAXA; it does not establish a paid procurement award. Contract signing dates, value and executed terms are not disclosed. Selection alone does not establish a completed flight experiment. March 2 is the selection-result publication date corroborated by JAXA’s dated program index.
Announced 2 Mar 2026 · Evidence checked 27 Sept 2026
Program organization: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Development agreement
Flight / payload software · Research & feasibility studies
Development of an onboard change-detection application that records observations, analyzes changes and generates notifications.
JAXA’s selection result reports demonstration agreements with proposers. The call assigns app-development costs to applicants and environment/data/orbital-operation costs to JAXA; it does not establish a paid procurement award. Contract signing dates, value and executed terms are not disclosed. Selection alone does not establish a completed flight experiment. March 2 is the selection-result publication date corroborated by JAXA’s dated program index.
Announced 2 Mar 2026 · Evidence checked 27 Sept 2026
Program organization: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Development agreement
Flight / payload software · Research & feasibility studies
Development and orbital demonstration of deep-learning water and ship-detection models; four successful observations were later reported in June-July 2026.
JAXA’s selection result reports demonstration agreements with proposers. The call assigns app-development costs to applicants and environment/data/orbital-operation costs to JAXA; it does not establish a paid procurement award. Contract signing dates, value and executed terms are not disclosed. Selection alone does not establish a completed flight experiment. March 2 is the selection-result publication date corroborated by JAXA’s dated program index.
Announced 2 Mar 2026 · Evidence checked 27 Sept 2026
Program organization: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Development agreement
Flight / payload software · Research & feasibility studies
Development of onboard SAR AI for ocean-surface classification and hazard awareness.
JAXA’s selection result reports demonstration agreements with proposers. The call assigns app-development costs to applicants and environment/data/orbital-operation costs to JAXA; it does not establish a paid procurement award. Contract signing dates, value and executed terms are not disclosed. Selection alone does not establish a completed flight experiment. March 2 is the selection-result publication date corroborated by JAXA’s dated program index.
Announced 2 Mar 2026 · Evidence checked 27 Sept 2026
Program organization: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Development agreement
Flight / payload software · Research & feasibility studies
Development of an emergency flood-area estimation service using a satellite onboard AI app.
JAXA’s selection result reports demonstration agreements with proposers. The call assigns app-development costs to applicants and environment/data/orbital-operation costs to JAXA; it does not establish a paid procurement award. Contract signing dates, value and executed terms are not disclosed. Selection alone does not establish a completed flight experiment. March 2 is the selection-result publication date corroborated by JAXA’s dated program index.
Announced 2 Mar 2026 · Evidence checked 27 Sept 2026
Buyer: Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space (iQPS) · Program: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Contract awarded
Launch capacity
Dedicated Electron launch of QPS-SAR12 hosting D-OBEC, identified as the fourth launch under iQPS’s eight-satellite launch agreement announced February 28, 2025. The launch was delivered August 5, 2025.
This row covers the named D-OBEC host launch only. No price is disclosed, and the remaining contracted spacecraft do not become D-OBEC compute nodes. August 1 is the mission-allocation publication date, not contract signing date.
Announced 1 Aug 2025 · Evidence checked 27 Sept 2026
Program organization: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Supplier selected
AMD Ryzen Embedded V1605B with Radeon Vega 8 graphics named in the D-OBEC host computer specification.
Published component technology use in JAXA’s host environment. Trial apps can use CPU or VPU resources, not the GPU. No direct procurement order, buyer, individual component price or purchase date is disclosed. July 15 is document publication date, not contract signature.
Announced 15 Jul 2025 · Evidence checked 30 Oct 2026
Program organization: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Supplier selected
One Intel Movidius Myriad NCS2-equivalent VPU named in the D-OBEC host computer specification.
Published component technology use in JAXA’s host environment. Trial apps can use CPU or VPU resources, not the GPU. No direct procurement order, buyer, individual component price or purchase date is disclosed. July 15 is document publication date, not contract signature.
Announced 15 Jul 2025 · Evidence checked 30 Oct 2026
Program organization: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Partnership
Payload integration · Mission operations · Research & feasibility studies
iQPS is the named joint-research partner hosting JAXA’s onboard AI computing equipment on its QPS-SAR12 satellite.
JAXA describes joint research and hosted equipment. No paid hosting contract value or agreement date is disclosed. The source is undated; do not substitute retrieval date for announcement date.
Announced Publication date not supplied · Evidence checked 27 Sept 2026
Further results from the selected AI apps and confirmation of continuing demonstration operations; no firm next event date disclosed.
Manual review 30 Oct 2026. JAXA sources identify the AMD processor, Intel VPU, app resource/data limits and task-specific relay timings. Host RAM/storage and computer power remain separate from per-app allocations. GPU access is excluded for trial apps. Component relationships reconciled. Primary body last observed 16 Oct, 00:49 UTC. Source monitoring: blocked. Source collection and substantive profile review are separate checks. Plans and dates may change.
Completion of the eleven selected candidate apps is not established; the Space Shift result applies to its own water/ship-detection trial only.
No sustained general-purpose compute benchmark, current payload uptime, utilization, paid compute customers or commercial compute-service availability is disclosed.
The published trial environment limits app access to CPU/VPU resources. Its 4 TB SSD includes a 1 TB user area shared across apps, not an additional 1 TB of capacity.
The company’s approximately 90% reduction in transmission volume is prospective, not a demonstrated result. Detection totals do not establish accuracy or recall.
JAXA reports signed demonstration agreements, not paid app-development procurement. Actual agreement dates, individual commercial terms and values remain undisclosed.
No inference is made that other iQPS satellites carry D-OBEC, that the whole iQPS launch order is compute capacity, or that all future autonomous/satellite-coordination goals have been demonstrated.
Project updates
Verified announcements and milestones linked to this project, newest first.
JAXA’s Onboard AI program hosts a high-performance computer and software platform on an iQPS satellite. The platform supports changing applications after launch and aims to process observation data and coordinate satellite operations. JAXA identifies iQPS as its joint-research host partner.
The September monthly analysis discusses large orbital-computing plans and Space Shift’s four-area onboard ship-detection result. Its Space Shift lead has been reconciled to the JAXA D-OBEC platform, its QPS-SAR12 host and the operator’s complete trial report.
The four trials covered Singapore, Port Hedland, Panama City and Tokyo Bay from June 12 to July 6. Success was announced August 7; detection counts are task results, not compute-capacity metrics.
JAXA’s dated program news link identifies publication of the selection result: nine distinct companies, with three proposals from Degas. The result reports demonstration agreements signed with proposers.
iQPS identified the dedicated QPS-SAR12 launch as the fourth under its eight-satellite agreement with Rocket Lab announced February 28, 2025. The release scheduled the host’s August 5 launch, which was subsequently confirmed.
