Assembly Required: Celebrating AI in space firsts
Commissioned by the European Space Agency’s Φ-lab
Designed by Trillium Technologies to showcase FDL’s NIO.space
The Brief
Φ-lab’s brief was to celebrate exploration at the intersection of cutting-edge AI and space science, with an artefact. We asked ourselves, “how do we do this for AI?”
Bringing AI in space to life as a high-tech sculpture.
The result is an installation that invites curiosity, evokes wonder, and hints at the modular, interoperable systems we may one day build not just around Earth, but across the solar system.
Suspended like a scientific relic from the near future, this luminous, cube-like installation blends art, engineering, and storytelling to bring to life the first steps of humanity’s next great engineering frontier: intelligence at the edge of space.
At first glance, it resembles a model kit, a nod to the nostalgic language of plastic assembly toys, but look closer. Each "kit" frame contains symbolic parts representing real onboard AI experimental “first” developed under the NIO.space initiative, a collaboration between ESA’s Φ-lab and FDL run by Trillium Technologies.
The Solution!
The panels are precision-engineered from tinted Perspex, intentionally chosen for their interaction with natural light. As sunlight filters through the structure, it casts chromatic shadows that shift across surfaces—echoing the evolving, multi-scale nature of AI-driven insights in space. This interplay of transparency, colour, and geometry invites visitors to move around the piece, discovering new perspectives, arguably a core idea of an in-space intelligence fabric.
Like Φ-lab itself, the artefact is a fusion of imagination and implementation: a poetic yet precise vision of space as a programmable, intelligent environment.
Celebrating AI in space firsts
Partnership between ESA and FDL Europe began in 2018. We have since achieved four “world firsts” in onboard AI together.
FDL has been proud partners with ESA in AI since 2017
“The Nio.space initiative is about testing out the kit of parts we will need for the in-space intelligence-fabric of the future. At FDL, we have been building out the capacity through running experiments, learning and extending our reach with flown ML payloads. We never imagined we would get to do modern art for ESA! But this was a great opportunity to do something that captured where we’ve been and where we’re going.”
James Parr, Director FDL
ML PAYLOADS HIGHLIGHTED
Space Weather and Early Prediction
ICARUS: Reliable space weather warnings through AI onboard and physics-informed ML.
Automated Methane plume monitoring from orbit
STARCOP: FDL’s initiative to pair AI methane detection using multiple satellites with diverse detection capabilities to quickly detect methane leaks onboard and provide notifications in near-real-time.
Unsupervised Change Detection
RaVÆn: unsupervised change detection of extreme events using ML on-board satellites
