The company is working with U.S.-based HySpeed Computing on equipment that’s meant to take images of Earth from orbit and then compress them, stream them to the ground and analyze them nearly in real time to look for things like forest fires and oil spills. They announced it’s to be tested on the International Space Station after a rocket launch delivers it in early 2023. (The Logic)

Talking point: Limited bandwidth for transmitting high-quality images to Earth from space is a constraint for satellite observation and controlling things like rovers from great distances. One solution is to increase processing power there, so devices can be more selective about what data gets sent down here. Metaspectral said it’s providing the payload—the gear that will actually be sent to space for this trial—while HySpeed is supplying the data-processing pipeline and analysis tools for a project they call OPTICA. Metaspectral’s work grew out of PixelDrive, an AI-based attempt at smarter compression for photos posted online.