Getting a complex electronics project off the ground is never easy, but Ken Chan’s latest creation presents some unique challenges. That’s because Chan’s project is designed to literally get off the ground — way off. It is called KENSAT, and it is a 2U CubeSat that is scheduled to go into orbit around the Earth this fall. Perhaps the coolest thing about KENSAT is that it’s not being built in a NASA clean room, but in Chan’s home lab.
Rather than simply collecting sensor data or acting as a communications relay, KENSAT is intended to demonstrate that modern edge AI hardware can operate autonomously in space. The hardware is built around an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano running a quantized TinyLlama large language model. Instead of relying on powerful computers back on Earth, the satellite performs AI inference directly in orbit before transmitting the results back to ground stations.
As you might expect, running this hardware in a satellite introduces some difficulties. Power is extremely limited, heat cannot be removed with fans because there is no air in space, and a system crash could leave the payload permanently offline. To solve those problems, KENSAT’s always-on flight computer keeps the Jetson powered down until it is needed. It switches power to the module only during scheduled operating windows, waits for it to boot, sends prompts over a UART connection, collects the generated response, and then shuts everything back down to conserve precious battery capacity.
The electrical power system board (📷: Ken Chan)
The rest of the spacecraft exists largely to support that AI payload. Custom-designed electrical power, radio, and antenna deployment boards work alongside the flight computer to keep the satellite healthy and connected. The power system includes watchdog circuitry capable of recovering from faults, while critical operations such as antenna deployment and AI inference are implemented as fault-tolerant state machines that can safely survive unexpected resets or brownouts.
Once an inference has been completed, the results are transmitted over a custom-built 437.08 MHz UHF radio link using AX.25 packets. In keeping with the spirit of amateur satellite operations, the telemetry is intentionally left unencrypted so radio enthusiasts around the world can receive, decode, and monitor the spacecraft’s transmissions using their own ground stations.
Chan has made the entire engineering effort available as open-source. The project’s GitHub repository includes the flight software, Jetson payload code, SDR ground station utilities, RF design tools, KiCad schematics, PCB layouts, and extensive documentation covering everything from system architecture to thermal analysis. Using this information, you could build your own copy of KENSAT; however, you’ll need to secure your own spot on a rocket if you want to get it into orbit.