ESA’s Massimiliano Pastena talks about the upcoming ɸ-sat. To demonstrate the potential of artificial intelligence in space, ESA has been working with partners to develop ɸ-sat to enhance the FSSCat mission. The hyperspectral camera on one of the two CubeSats that make up the FSSCat mission will collect an enormous number of images of Earth, some of which will not be suitable for use because of cloud cover. To avoid downlinking these less than perfect images back to Earth, the ɸ-sat artificial intelligence chip will filter them out so that only usable data are returned.