Space to Soil

The Lightweight Onboard Observation Pipeline (LOOP) is a reusable onboard decision architecture for Earth-observing (EO) SmallSats that closes the gap between data acquisition and downlink capacity. LOOP separates a mission-independent flight core from a swappable mission-specific objective layer, enabling rapid retargeting across applications. The flight core pairs an adaptive priority scheduler with a multi-purpose HRIT-driven cloud-risk nowcaster that forecasts clear-sky probability for upcoming passes and is reused across missions. The objective layer holds two layer-wise models that swap per mission: a capture-time cloud commit gate and a per-target classifier. Combining these simpler models into a staged pipeline keeps the full decision stack under seven megabytes within a 6U SmallSat envelope. LOOP downlinks compact per-target decision records, sharply lowering bandwidth demands while preserving uncertainty-aware re-targeting.