Space technology: the change of paradigm

Abstract

Space is the most preeminent area of technological convergence, and electronics is prevailing. Fifty years ago Apollo 11 carried 3 cosmonauts on to the Moon. It was a milestone setting the technological trends for the next century. Today more than 2000 satellites operating high complexity microelectronics support global communication or enable observations that were unimaginable a decade ago. Space technologies are now ubiquitous emerging in Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, autonomous vehicles, or advancing next generation of paradigms as quantum, or genetics technologies. The presentation overviews selected topics of Earth Observation (EO) technologies as a unified Artificial Intelligence (AI) paradigm. Next generation of smart sensors integrate information extraction, the sensor networks implement part of the cognition mechanisms. Advanced signal processing and machine or deep learning methods boost the analytical method for data understanding. High performance computing and information architectures as blockchain implement solutions for a large community of users and highly impacting problems as climate change, disaster monitoring or food security. The high complexity of the space technologies resulted in a specific ontology defining the technical knowhow, this will be summarized with an analysis of niche areas of importance and high scientific and technologic impact.