NTNU SmallSat Lab

28/10/2025

We are all dependent on satellite-based services in our daily lives. That means we need to have active research, first-class infrastructure, and a solid education to be competitive and to know how to manage and utilize such services. Read about what we have achieved with the HYPSO-satellites and how that fits the bigger picture.

Direktoratet for romvirksomhet, Kongsberg NanoAvionics

Rom- og satellitteknologi har blitt uunnværlige i vårt daglige liv. Vi bruker alle sli tjenester, til alt fra navigasjon, værmelding og bruk av mobiltelefon.

06/02/2025

Here is a small update on current activities at the NTNU SmallSat Lab. One of our main endeavors now is to ensure that HYPSO-1 and HYPSO-2 satellites deliver useful data that can have an impact for other researchers.

NTNU - Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet

Den dro fra jorda i en av Elon Musks raketter for litt siden. Nå er forskningssatellitten fra NTNU i full sving med å overvåke kyst og havområder.

21/01/2025

17/12/2024

We are hiring! Please check out our two new job-offers (PhD candidates) if you want to do research on agile small satellites with our team here in Trondheim.

https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/272503/phd-candidate-in-development-of-methods-for-smart-and-agile-operations-of-small-satellites

https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/272399/phd-candidate-in-modelling-and-optimization-of-small-satellites-operation

Job title: PhD Candidate in Modelling and optimization of small satellites operation (272399), Employer: NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Deadline: Sunday, January 12, 2025

07/11/2024

This Monday, we took the hyperspectral remote sensing HYPSO-2 satellite into use. To mark this, we first had a seminar where the HYPSO-team together with other researchers, industry and governmental participants discussed the impact and contribution of the satellite research here at NTNU - Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet. The seminar was concluded with a demonstration of a live booking of hyperspectral observations later the same day, by the Minister of Digitalisation and Public Governance, Karianne Tung. As ordered, the successful hyperspectral images were handed over at a reception later in the evening. We are now very much looking forward to further demonstrating how agile small satellites can be used for ocean (and the rest of the Earth...) observation. Thanks a lot to everyone contributing! Read more here (in Norwegian), or look at the photos :). https://nyheter.ntnu.no/dette-er-en-bragd-av-ntnu/

17/08/2024

17/08/2024

The hunt for HYPSO-2 was short so far. We have had several contacts from our ground station at NTNU - Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet already, and now the operations team at Kongsberg NanoAvionics will conduct the early-operations phase and check out the status of the satellite.

15/08/2024

In preparation for the HYPSO-2 launch very soon, we have now re-launched our web pages! The most complete information (best viewed on a desktop), you will find on the official website NTNU website https://ntnu.edu/smallsat. Here you find information about our satellites, including some example datasets! You can also read about our related research projects.

We also have filled https://hypso.space with a bit lighter but detailed, information about the satellites and our projects. This is best viewed on your phone.

HYPSO-2 will be launched on the SpaceX transporter-11 mission, from Vandenberg Space Force Base very soon. We will update this space with detailed information when we have it.

Kongsberg NanoAvionics, KSAT - Kongsberg Satellite Services, NTNU - Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet, Elektronisk systemdesign og innovasjon NTNU, Institutt for teknisk kybernetikk

The image below is a throwback to when the HYPSO-2 instruments were tested last year.

09/01/2024

21/12/2023

We now have only a few days left of 2023, and there is time for some reflection. When we enter 2024, our first research satellite, the HYPSO-1, soon pass the two-year orbit mark! We have collected over 2000 observations and are continuously developing both the on-board software and the data processing and distribution pipeline for data sharing. Watch this space for announcements on how you can work with HYPSO-1 data soon! See our image of the western bank of the Black Sea below.

In addition to the ongoing HYPSO-1 operation, our team has also delivered the two payloads for our next satellite: HYPSO-2. Back in August 2022, we shipped an upgraded hyperspectral camera and a software-defined radio to be integrated at Kongsberg NanoAvionics. The integration and environmental tests finished in December, and some of our team went to Vilnius for final testing and “goodbyes”.

Being an academic organization, our team always changes. In 2023, three new PhD candidates, Samuel Boyle, Cameron Penne and Corrado Chiatante joined our team. We are looking forward to following their work! Two of our colleagues recently finished their PhD work, with Marie Henriksen and Bjørn Andreas Kristiansen successfully defending their degrees in December.

The team has been active in publishing and attending conferences and events, both nationally and internationally. Notably, in October, our satellite operator Simen Berg was awarded the Spaceport Norway Young Award for his work both for the HYPSO project and the student projects.
This year, we have also been shaping our education efforts. The Department of Electronic Systems and the Department of Engineering Cybernetics have a close collaboration on specializations studies for space systems. The first students started their 4th year this August. We are also working with our colleagues nationally and we have been active contributors in space education workshops together with Tekna, Andøya Space Education, University of Oslo (UiO), UiT- The Arctic University of Norway, and others.

A big thanks to our partners and suppliers, at NTNU departments, research groups and centres, in addition to external partners such as Kongsberg NanoAvionics, Andøya Space, KSAT – Kongsberg Satellite Services, Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, Alén Space, Space Norway, EIDEL AS, Nammo AS, Norwegian Space Agency, Tekna, ESA, Nanovac AB, Spaceport Norway, Forsvarets forskningsinstitutt - FFI, UiT, UiO, The University Centre in Svalbard and many more.

God jul til alle!

03/09/2023

🛰️🤖🐟🌍
Curious about how we see the Earth from the HYPSO-1 satellite?

The HYPSO-1 satellite has acquired so far more than a thousand images worldwide. We are excited to share a portion of our data with the public, offering both raw and calibrated radiance information. We introduce the "HYPSO-1 Sea-Land-Cloud-Labeled Dataset", a collection of 200 calibrated hyperspectral captures spanning all continents. Among these, 38 captures come with pixel-level ground-truth labels, facilitating precise segmentation of Sea/Land/Cloud areas by Machine Learning and Deep Learning models in addition to supporting other applications like super-resolution, anomaly detection, image fusion, and unmixing.
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Read more on our article on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. Links below.
💻 Website with the open dataset (access from PC): https://ntnu-smallsat-lab.github.io/hypso1_sea_land_clouds_dataset/
📄 Article's abstract: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.13679
📄 Article in PDF:https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.13679.pdf

Jon Alvarez Justo, Joseph L Garrett, Dennis Langer, Marie Henriksen, Radu Ionescu, Tor Arne Johansen

Hyperspectral Imaging, employed in satellites for space remote sensing, like HYPSO-1, faces constraints due to few labeled data sets, affecting the training of AI models demanding these ground-truth annotations. In this work, we introduce The HYPSO-1 Sea-Land-Cloud-Labeled Dataset, an open dataset w...