The European Space Agency opened its AI Hub at Harwell in Oxfordshire on November 3, 2026, providing a facility for developing and testing artificial intelligence applications for satellite-enabled communications. Supported by the UK Space Agency, the hub is located at ESA’s European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications.
Companies and researchers will have access to computing resources, robotics platforms, drones, laboratory space and demonstration facilities. The hub also connects with the neighboring 5G/6G Hub, enabling communications and autonomous-system experiments to use facilities at the same site.
Testing Connected Systems
The research program covers more efficient use of radio frequencies, cybersecurity, direct-to-device satellite communications and networks combining satellites in different orbits. It also includes digital twins: computer representations used to examine how a network behaves under different conditions.
These activities concern the operation of communications networks as well as the devices connected to them. Satellite and terrestrial networks can be combined so that an application has access to more than one form of connectivity. Research at the hub will investigate how AI can help manage those connections and support autonomous systems using them.
A Robot Team as the First Project
The first project brings together Autodiscovery and the University of Oxford’s Oxford Robotics Institute. ESA announced the collaboration on October 8, ahead of the facility’s opening. Its planned team consists of four robotic dogs and one scouting drone.
The project will develop software and communications that allow the machines to exchange information and coordinate their activities. Its distributed design is intended to allow the team to adapt if an individual robot becomes unavailable.
The robots will combine laser ranging, color and depth cameras, thermal imaging, voice and air-quality sensors. Local processing, often called edge AI, will analyze observations near the sensors collecting them. The systems will share information to construct three-dimensional representations of their surroundings.
Communications work examines terrestrial 5G/6G networks and direct satellite links to support coordination where ground-based connectivity is limited or unavailable.
The initiative includes safety, security and cybersecurity work. Navigation, mapping, AI and autonomy software will be developed in the UK using an open-source framework intended to support inspection and updates.
ESA identifies industrial inspection, infrastructure monitoring and disaster response among the prospective applications. CORPS Security and Johnson Controls have expressed interest in the outcomes. The satellite-connected robot project provides an application in which sensing, local computing and communications can be tested together.
The AI Hub was developed under ESA’s Space for 5G/6G and Sustainable Connectivity program. Alongside industry projects, its activities will support doctoral supervision and postdoctoral research through university programs, connecting academic work with experiments in satellite and terrestrial networking.
