KP Labs sp. z o. o.

Information

Institution description

KP Labs, a Polish company in the New Space sector, founded in 2016, aims to accelerate space exploration through the development of autonomous mission operations and robotic technologies. The company provides comprehensive solutions, including a fully integrated package of hardware, software, and in-house developed algorithms for onboard satellite data processing. KP Labs participates in 7 space missions and implements over 35 projects for the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA, and private sector clients, actively contributing to international missions. The team consists of approximately 80 specialists, and KP Labs holds the status of a Research and Development Center, granted by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. In November 2024, the company received the President of Poland Award in the "SME Leader" category and the ESA Innovation Award.

The company's pathfinder project was EU-funded Intuition-1. In this space mission, on 11th November 2023, KP Labs launched a 6-U CubeSat equipped with a hyperspectral instrument and advanced data processing unit Leopard (designed by KP Labs) running (deep) machine learning. Since launch, KP Labs has operated the spacecraft through its own mission control center, collecting Earth images and performing in-orbit processing of hyperspectral imagery.

KP Labs develops its own product line: Smart Mission Ecosystem. For mission integrators and operators who need to build advanced spacecraft, the Smart Mission Ecosystem brings together the necessary hardware, software, and AI-powered algorithms for complete missions. Unlike fragmented, difficult-to-integrate solutions, the ecosystem was designed with a holistic approach to enable onboard data processing at the payload and satellite levels, as well as to ensure safer, more fault-tolerant missions. The Smart Mission Ecosystem is a set of data processing and computing units, flight software, and AI-powered algorithms – presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Smart Mission Ecosystem

Based on a contract signed on June 21, 2018, within the scope of the Intelligent Development Operational Program 2014-2020, KP Labs was granted funds to build a new Research and Development Center, whose main purpose is the development of complete subsystems for the space sector. The investment was finalized in May 2022. The project outcome is a new, three-story building (Figure 2) equipped with ca. 2370 m2 of office space & various laboratories (Figure 3).

The labs are equipped with specialized equipment necessary for the execution of the assigned tasks. The list of the laboratories and other facilities is as follows:

• Mission planning and image analysis laboratory,
• Algorithms and satellite navigation (GNC) laboratory,
• Communication systems laboratory and EMC laboratory,
• Electrical systems assembly and testing laboratory, including e.g: Pick & Place station.
• Cleanroom with an area 16 m2 of ISO7 and two laminar flow cabinets for ISO5,
• Mechanical and thermal laboratory, including e.g.: Thermal-Vacuum Chamber, CNC machine, climate chamber, Infrared Camera, roughness measurement tool, torque monitor, force monitor, pressure monitor, thermal interface material dispenser, 3D printers, good quality mechanical tooling, and ESD safe assembly desks.
• Machine learning laboratory with powerful servers, decent GPUs available, including e.g. dedicated Linux servers with NVIDIA Tesla T4 and RTX 3090 GPUs, and multiple PCs with NVIDIA GPUs of different generations for local testing,

KP Labs develops its own on-board computers (OBCs) and digital processing units (DPUs) for satellites, including Antelope and Leopard units with proven flight heritage. KP Labs owns several other commercially available processors for edge devices, i.e., Brainchip Akida, Intel Movidius, Versal AI Core Series VCK190 & Raspberry Pi 3. The team has unlimited access to the facilities at no extra cost for the project.

Figure 2. KP Labs headquarters

Figure 3. One of KP Labs laboratories: mechanical and thermal laboratory 

Technical Officer Bio

Jakub Nalepa received his MSc (2011), PhD (2016), and DSc (2021) in Computer Science from Silesian University of Technology, Poland, where he is an Associate Professor. Jakub is Head of AI at KP Labs, where he shapes the scientific and industrial AI objectives of the company related to, among others, Earth Observation, on-board and on-the-ground satellite data analysis, (deep) machine learning and image analysis. He has been pivotal in designing the on-board deep learning capabilities of the Intuition-1 mission (KP Labs) and has contributed to other missions, including CHIME, Φ-Sat-2, and OPS-SAT (European Space Agency). His interests focus on (deep) machine learning, multi/hyperspectral data analysis, signal processing, remote sensing, evolutionary computation, explainable artificial intelligence, and tackling practical challenges that arise in Earth Observation to deploy scalable Earth Observation solutions. Jakub was the General Chair of the HYPERVIEW Challenge at IEEE ICIP 2022, focusing on the estimation of soil parameters from HSIs on board Intuition-1, as well as of the HYPERVIEW2 Challenge at ECAI 2025. He is a Senior Member of IEEE. Jakub is a Visiting Professor at ESA Φ-Lab (Frascati, Italy).

Project

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