An iniVation DAVIS240C vision sensor has become the world’s first ever neuromorphic technology to reach space.

The sensor included in the custom payload was part of the UNSW Canberra Space’s M2 CubeSat satellite, which was successfully launched with Rocket Lab’s ‘They Go Up So Fast’ mission from New Zealand earlier this month.

The mission, a collaboration between Western Sydney University’s International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems (ICNS), UNSW Canberra Space and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), brings together emerging technologies that deliver advanced capabilities in Earth observation, maritime surveillance, and satellite communications.

Dr. Kynan Eng, CEO and co-founder at iniVation, emphasized both the ground-breaking possibilities and the collaborative nature of the mission. He said, “As a company focused on ultimate machine vision performance in challenging, power-limited environments, space is about as hard as it gets. We are very excited to see our technology taking the first small steps towards supporting long-term human activities in space.

Such an achievement has been made possible through long-term collaborations with many team members and colleagues, both within the company and in other organizations, in particular the ICNS and the Institute of Neuroinformatics at the University of Zurich and the ETH Zurich. We are looking forward to even deeper collaboration to bring this technology to commercial reality.”