maintaining formations<\/a> \u201cwith minimal supervision from the ground,\u201d the news release said.<\/p>\n\u201cWith the EraDrive modules, we\u2019re giving spacecraft the ability to see, decide, and act for themselves so operators can safely scale from tens of assets to hundreds and eventually thousands,\u201d Sharma said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Ricardo Sequerra, Point Nine partner said in a statement that autonomy has transformed cars, factories and logistics. \u201cSpace is the next frontier, and it comes with even harsher constraints and higher stakes.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to enhancing autonomy for individual satellites, EraDrive co-founders say proliferation of their software-hardware kits will improve space traffic coordination.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal is to not just enable autonomy for individual satellites, but to aggregate data from those kits in a similar way to Google Maps aggregating data from individual cars to create a network where we can do space traffic monitoring, space traffic management in an autonomous way,\u201d Kruger said.<\/p>\n
Self-Driving Satellites<\/p>\n
EraDrive\u2019s definition of self-driving spacecraft is based on terminology and classification related to self-driving cars.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost satellites today run maneuvers computed on the ground and replayed on board,\u201d said Simone D\u2019Amico, EraDrive co-founder and chief strategy officer. \u201cThey have a very limited capability to react to events.\u201d<\/p>\n
In contrast, self-driving satellites can achieve high-level goals with minimal supervision from the ground. \u201cThe key distinction is that the autonomous spacecraft is able to sense, to understand the environment, identify behavior and threats and react to that environment,\u201d D\u2019Amico said.<\/p>\n
Over the long term, EraDrive seeks to develop \u201ccognitive spacecraft,\u201d meaning operators will interface with spacecraft using natural language, D\u2019Amico said. For example, a satellite operator could direct a satellite to de-tumble an unfamiliar satellite. \u201cThen the satellite, on its own, will be able to make decisions in order to do that safely and efficiently,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Similarly, a satellite viewing its surroundings could interpret the behavior of nearby spacecraft to inform operators \u201cthis satellite is receding from me or this satellite is approaching me,\u201d D\u2019Amico said.<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2013 EraDrive, a Stanford University spinoff developing software and hardware for satellite autonomy, raised $5.3 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[108271,9409,85,46,3443,28808,37004,125,997],"class_list":{"0":"post-187591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-eradrive","9":"tag-fundraising","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-sn","13":"tag-space-situational-awareness","14":"tag-space-traffic-management","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-venture-capital"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Starling.png\")
EraDrive founders tested formation flying as part of the NASA Starling mission. Shown are the four Starling six-unit cubesats in a clean room at the NASA Ames Research Center. Credit: NASA<\/p>\n