Satellite YAM-9, built by Loft Orbital, deployed a Vision-Language Model (VLM) in orbit with the ability to analyze imagery - researchers asked the model to classify sensor data to identify infrastructure around railway hubs — and it did it successfully - the VLM identified areas of interest in response to natural language queries.

The software - NAVI-Orbital - was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) leveraging Google DeepMind’s Gemma 3 VLM. https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/15/a-satellite-just-learned-to-find-things-on-its-own-heres-what-that-means/ #VLMs #Satellites #NASA #JPL #VisionAnalysis #Google #DeepMind #VisionLanguageModel #SpaceCraft #Space #YAM9 #NAVIOrbital #SensorData