Aechelon Technology and its partners, including Niantic Spatial, ICEYE, BlackSky, and Distance Technologies, have announced 'Project Orbion,' a groundbreaking initiative to create a live, dynamic 3D Digital Twin of the Earth that integrates real-time satellite imagery, radar data, video photogrammetry, and AI.

This platform can penetrate darkness, clouds, and smoke, enabling rapid response to natural disasters and defense scenarios with up-to-date 3D visuals of the Earth.

The goal of Project Orbion is to provide real-time, accurate, and dynamic 3D representations of the Earth for applications such as disaster monitoring, military operations, urban rescues, and remote disaster response, thereby enhancing situational awareness and decision-making.

The initiative underscores the importance of real-time geospatial data for wildfire monitoring and military targeting, with machine learning algorithms playing a key role in processing satellite data.

Aechelon’s Synthetic Reality platform, combined with Skybeam, leverages geospatial data and AI-driven simulations to create immersive environments for military and civilian training, simulation, and analysis, addressing mission-critical applications.

Skybeam integrates geospatial data and AI to adapt to changing physical conditions, aiming to support advanced training and simulation for both humans and autonomous systems.

The project utilizes Aechelon’s military-grade Synthetic Reality platforms and AI training systems to keep pace with physical world changes, improving mission readiness and autonomous system deployment.

A key focus is on merging diverse geospatial data sources in enterprise environments and establishing standards for sharing geospatial information.

The collaboration employs cutting-edge geospatial, radar, and visualization technologies to enhance military simulation, training, and mission planning.

Company leaders emphasize that keeping pace with global physical changes is vital for improving training and autonomous systems, viewing Project Orbion as a step toward advanced dual-use applications.

The initiative explores integrating Niantic Spatial’s Visual Positioning System (VPS) to achieve centimeter-level localization in GPS-denied environments, which is critical for search-and-rescue operations.

A major goal is to enable precise localization in GPS-denied environments through VPS, supporting complex operations and search-and-rescue missions.

BlackSky’s CEO highlights that their AI-first approach enables real-time high-cadence imagery and analytics, transforming responses to security, economic, and natural disaster events.

Industry leaders stress the importance of geospatial understanding for emergency response, with Niantic Spatial, ICEYE, and BlackSky emphasizing enhanced situational awareness, rapid ground condition assessment, and AI-enabled analytics.

ICEYE’s radar satellites allow rapid ground event response regardless of weather or darkness, and their data fusion with Skybeam expands capabilities for defense and training.

Distance Technologies is developing Light Field AR HUDs for aerospace simulation, supporting real-time battlefield intelligence, target analysis, and AR training, with collaborations aimed at advancing autonomous AI safety and human-AI interaction.

The first application of Project Orbion will support the U.S. Coast Guard Aviation Training Center by providing 3D scanning and simulation of helicopter landing zones using Aechelon’s flight simulator and Niantic Spatial’s technology.

The Digital Twin from Project Orbion is designed to train defense and corporate AI models with real-world data, ensuring models are grounded in actual ground truth conditions to improve AI performance in complex scenarios.

The project integrates high-resolution imagery from BlackSky and radar data from ICEYE into Aechelon’s Skybeam 3D database, making this data accessible for both human users and AI algorithms.