Satellites generate petabytes of raw data every day, yet traditional downlink-then-process workflows create delays and drive mission cost. TychoBoB solves this bottleneck with a general-purpose, FPGA-based edge computer that is installed directly inside a small satellite.
The platform is built for ease-of-use and affordability, enabling research institutes, SME payload developers and mission owners to run custom, high-performance applications in orbit with only a few engineering hours.
This is achievable with:
Early-stage Earth observation mission owners, university smallsat labs, and SME payload/algorithm developers need an affordable way to validate high-throughput onboard processing before they lock in a satellite bus or raise full mission funding.
Today, they either buy costly engineering models late in the schedule or rely on software emulators that hide hardware bottlenecks. Both options create re-design risk, months of delay and significant extra cost.
TychoBoB addresses these gaps by letting a two-or-three-person team load its own Linux services onto a flight-representative board in days, instead of months. A cloud-hosted FlatSat and short-term EM leasing remove the up-front CAPEX barriers, while a built-in functionality and Yocto flow reduce integration surprises later. During this InCubed activity, NTNU (research) and S&T Norway (SME) act as pilot users, feeding real requirements, IP cores and test cases into the development process.
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, France, Spain, United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, and Switzerland.
TychoBoB is a Xilinx UltraScale+-based FPGA/ARM edge computer tailored for small satellites.
The compact board hooks directly to a wide range of sensors via LVDS/CameraLink, 1 Gb Ethernet, CAN, UART and SPI, ingests high-rate data streams, and executes sophisticated AI/ML workloads to detect events and alert end-users with minimal latency.
Key innovations:
TychoBoB cuts mission cost at two critical points: (1) it slashes the amount of raw data that must be downlinked, and (2) it lets operators process data in-orbit instead of paying for large cloud clusters on the ground.
A 2025 third-party market study comparing a “traditional” Earth observation satellite stack with a TychoBoB-enabled stack found:
Total estimated savings are around € 210 000 per satellite, per year, without sacrificing data quality or latency.
Beyond direct OPEX gains, TychoBoB delivers:
These combined advantages translate into shorter payback periods and higher ROI for commercial, governmental and research missions.
As of July 2026, the activity is progressing towards a pilot test in October. Hardware is being sent to production and the software development is nearing an MVP. In terms of customer interest, the product is garnering increasing amounts of attention. Several large customers are interested, despite the original business hypothesis. However, they require additional radiation tolerance updates to hardware and software. The original smaller customer segments are also interested. TychoBoB is a likely candidate for two upcoming IOD opportunities. The deadline for go/No-go for these opportunities await confirmation.
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