09 February 2026

The CDTI Innovation delivers, within the framework of the Pre-Commercial Public Purchase, two prototypes for the application of on-board processing in satellites

The initiative focuses on pre-commercial procurement of R&D services for the development of an on-board processing system in Earth observation satellites with radar (SAR) and high-resolution optical (V/IR) technologies.
The requesting public entity is the Directorate General of Armament and Materials of the Ministry of Defence.

The initiative has a base tender budget of 4.6 million euros and 22 months of execution

The CDTI Innovation advances in the delivery of prototypes of different public procurement actions, co-financed by the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism (MRR) and by the FEDER 2021-2027 funds. In this context, today the delivery of two prototypes of the Public Procurement of Innovation initiative on on-board processing in satellites, whose requesting entity is the Directorate General of Armament and Material of the Ministry of Defense, has been carried out, with a base tender budget of 4.6 million euros and a total execution time of 22 months. The event was also attended by the General Director of the CDTI Innovation, José Moisés Martín Carretero and María Vega Gil, Director of Certification and Innovative Public Procurement of the CDTI.

Optical observation satellites in the visible and infrared (V/IR) spectrum and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems generate an increasing volume of information that, when traditionally processed on Earth, reveals the limitations of communications infrastructures in terms of bandwidth and latency, making it difficult to obtain useful time information for applications requiring fast or real-time responses.

Faced with this challenge, the initiative proposes the development of a processing system on board the satellite itself, capable of processing data from high-resolution optical and/or SAR payloads before their transmission to Earth. Likewise, the use of artificial intelligence techniques allows to significantly reduce the volume of data transmitted, improve latency and speed up the analysis and decision-making based on satellite images.

Since 2018, the CDTI Innovation promotes Pre-Commercial Public Procurement (PPC) as an instrument for the acquisition of R&D services aimed at the development of innovative prototypes that respond to public needs. The developed prototypes are assigned to Spanish public entities for validation in real environments, with exclusive use as technological demonstrators and without commercial purposes.

CDTI Innovation

The Center for Technological Development and Innovation, CDTI E.P.E. It is the innovation agency of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, whose objective is the promotion of technological innovation in the business environment. The mission of the CDTI is to ensure that the Spanish business fabric generates and transforms scientific and technical knowledge into globally competitive, sustainable and inclusive growth. In 2024, within the framework of a new strategic plan, the CDTI provided more than 2.3 billion euros of support to Spanish companies and startups.

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