
Unibap Space Solutions
Unibap Space Solutions builds radiation-tolerant onboard computers and Linux software that run AI inference directly on satellites, so a mission downlinks finished insights rather than raw imagery. Sold by quotation to defence, emergency and commercial space operators.
What is Unibap Space Solutions?
Unibap Space Solutions is a Swedish manufacturer of onboard computers and flight software that let a satellite do its own thinking. Instead of downlinking every raw frame and waiting for a ground segment to process it, the platform analyses data where it is captured and sends back the result — the promise the company puts on its homepage is simply Just Get the Answer. The commercial argument follows from that: where a satellite once delivered generic products to a handful of customers, onboard processing lets the same spacecraft serve tailored products to many more, faster and at lower cost.
Three flight computers make up the range. The iX5 is the smallest at 420 g, built on an AMD Steppe Eagle CPU with an Intel Movidius Myriad X vision processor; it has flown five missions and passed a thousand cumulative days in orbit. The iX10 moves up to an AMD Ryzen V1000 with eight Radeon GPU units and either a Myriad X or a Hailo-8 accelerator. The iX20 is the newest, combining an AMD Ryzen V8000, a twelve-core Radeon GPU at 2.7 GHz, four Hailo-8 accelerators, 64 GB of ECC DDR5 and four 4 TB NVMe drives in a 1,820 g enclosure drawing 40 to 50 W in typical use. All are qualified for vibration, shock, thermal vacuum, EMC, outgassing and radiation, and rated for LEO, MEO, GEO and interplanetary orbits.
Three software products sit on top. Unibap SCOS is an Ubuntu Server operating system carrying ROCm, TensorFlow, Torch, OpenVINO and HailoRT, with a containerised framework that isolates each application from other spacecraft systems and SafetyChip and SafetyBoot mechanisms to ride out radiation upsets. Unibap LOOM pre-processes hyperspectral data in flight — up to 32 bands, band co-registration, de-noising, radiance-to-reflectance conversion — and writes georeferenced GEO-TIFF. Unibap SEQR adds a hardware-rooted chain of trust, in-stream AES-GCM encryption, SHA-3 hashing beyond 100 Gbps and ML-KEM-1024 post-quantum key exchange.
Around the products runs a developer ecosystem: Application Development Systems shipped off the shelf, a Remote Access service offering time on genuine engineering models, and a published compatibility list of fifteen third-party vendors. More than forty external applications have been verified in orbit. Named partners and customers include NASA, ESA, Moog, Argotec, D-Orbit, Loft Orbital, KSAT and Thales Alenia Space.
What it does
- Run AI and machine-learning inference directly on board a satellite
- Turn up to 100 Gbps of raw sensor data into actionable information in real time
- Pre-process hyperspectral data in orbit and output corrected, georeferenced GEO-TIFF imagery
- Host containerised Linux applications isolated from the rest of the spacecraft
- Protect the platform and its data with secure boot, encryption, signing and tamper-evident logging
- Connect heterogeneous payloads through LVDS, SpaceWire, Camera Link, 10 GbE, RS422, CAN and I2C
- Reconfigure the mission and upload new applications while the spacecraft is in orbit
When to use Unibap Space Solutions / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Unibap Space Solutions is the right fit.
When to use Unibap Space Solutions
- Earth-observation constellation operators who want to serve tailored products to many customers per satellite instead of one generic image feed
- Defence and ISR programmes: the site names orders from the Swedish FMV, the Danish Ministry of Defence, Korean and Italian defence contractors and a US space ISR company
- Space-software vendors with no flight heritage, who can develop on an Application Development System, verify on an engineering model and fly on a flight model
- Emergency services and maritime surveillance teams, such as the Arctic surveillance work in mission Bifrost
- Payload integrators, who use the iX platforms as a universal data interface for plug-and-play integration of a complete payload
When not to use Unibap Space Solutions
- Anyone expecting self-service: there is no account, no trial and no published price, and every engagement starts with a quotation
- Users looking for a web, mobile or desktop application — the product is an embedded flight computer plus a Linux OS shipped as .deb packages
- Developers who need a public API: no documentation site, no developer subdomain and no API endpoint could be found
- Ground-only or terrestrial workloads, since the whole range is qualified and priced for vibration, shock, thermal vacuum, EMC and radiation
- Buyers in jurisdictions where EU or US export-control and sanctions rules would block delivery, which the terms explicitly allow for
How to use Unibap Space Solutions
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Get in touch through the contact form or write to sales@unibap.com — there is no self-service path
- Pick the platform that fits the mass, power and throughput budget of the spacecraft: iX5, iX10 or iX20
- Take out Unibap Remote Access to develop and validate remotely on genuine hardware before committing to a purchase
- Choose a service level: Light gives three months on an iX5 or iX10 Application Development System with SCOS documentation
- Premium adds an engineering model for six days alongside six months of ADS access, plus an introduction seminar
- Premium - Advanced adds ten hours of remote support on demand
- Accept the Remote Access Terms, receive the documentation, agree a start date and collect the login credentials
- Develop on the ADS, verify on the engineering model, then fly on the flight model
- Package the application as a container for SCOS, or install LOOM from its .deb packages on a Linux system
- Ask to be listed on the Unibap Compatible Software List, then order flight hardware against a quotation
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Verifiable flight heritage: hardware in orbit since 2016, with the iX5 alone past a thousand days across five missions
- Open Linux platform, explicitly designed so that a team without prior space experience can develop for it
- Documented third-party ecosystem — fifteen listed software vendors and more than forty applications verified in orbit
- Real hardware can be tested from the ground, through the ADS and Remote Access, before any purchase
- Quality management system certified to ISO 9001:2015 by RISE, certificate 6123 version 4, valid to 03/07/2028
- Contractual compatibility commitments: support for new software releases for at least two years, update compatibility for three
- In-house production and qualification, with a dedicated facility opened in 2023 and a second site at Ulls väg 29 A
Cons
- No published price of any kind, which makes any budget comparison impossible before entering a sales conversation
- Neither a free plan nor a free trial is offered
- The privacy policy is dated 15/05/2018 and still names "Unibap AB (publ.)", predating the company name registered on 26/05/2025
- No public technical documentation, no API and no developer subdomain
- No social presence is linked from the site at all
- Deliveries depend on EU and US export licences, and a refusal or delay is expressly not a breach of contract
- A legacy product page for "SpaceCloud OS and Framework" still sits in the sitemap with 2023 documentation, outside the current navigation
Pricing & Plans
No free plan and no free trial are advertised, and no price is published anywhere on the site: the sitemap contains no pricing page and no amount appears on any product or service page. The General Terms and Conditions provide that the customer pays the fees set out in the Quotation, exclusive of VAT and other taxes; additional services are billed on a time-and-material basis against the price list in force, with expenses re-invoiced at cost plus a 15 % markup, and recurring fees and hourly rates may be adjusted annually against the Swedish consumer price index with thirty days' notice. The Remote Access Terms likewise leave any termination fee to the quotation. Because the commercial regime combines flight-hardware purchase, software licensing and contracted services, no meaningful entry price can be stated, and the starting price, currency and billing unit are therefore left empty rather than filled with a misleading figure.
- access to an iX5 or iX10 Application Development System for three months
- with SCOS documentation and user manuals. No price published.
- ADS and engineering model access
- six months for the ADS and six days for the engineering model
- plus an introduction seminar. No price published.
- same scope as Premium plus ten hours of remote support on demand. No price published.
- Flight hardware
- software licences and custom development are quoted individually and have no published plan or list price.
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Unibap Space Solutions handles your data.
GDPR overview
Implementation is real but visibly ageing. The privacy policy is a translation of a Swedish original dated Uppsala 2018-05-15, and it still names "Unibap AB (publ.)" rather than the current company name. It identifies two controllers by registration number, 556925-1134 and 559148-9868, names contract, legal obligation, legitimate interest and consent as legal bases, sets retention periods, and lists the full set of data-subject rights — access, portability, rectification, restriction, erasure, objection, withdrawal of consent, complaint to the supervisory authority, and objection to automated decision-making and profiling. A single contact address, legal@unibap.com, is given. Transfers outside the EEA are foreseen. No DPO and no Article 27 representative are named, and nowhere does the site claim in so many words that it is GDPR compliant; the general terms impose a mutual obligation on both parties instead.
Who owns the data?
Unibap keeps ownership of the intellectual property in everything it delivers; the customer receives a right of use for its own internal business purposes, and a right of resale or sub-licensing only where the quotation says so. Any end user must then be bound by Unibap's EULA, and the customer indemnifies Unibap if that fails. On personal data the position is deliberately narrow: unless the agreement says otherwise, neither party processes data on behalf of the other, and each remains solely responsible for its own processing. Under the Remote Access service the picture reverses — anything accessed during the session counts as Unibap's confidential information, and backing up the customer's own working data is the customer's responsibility alone.
Reuse rights
Within the licence granted, the customer may use the delivered hardware and software freely for its own and its affiliates' internal business purposes without asking again. Resale and sub-licensing are the exception rather than the rule: they are permitted only to the extent set out in the quotation or agreed separately in writing, and the customer must then make every end user accept the Unibap EULA and accepts full liability for any breach. Data produced by onboard processing stays with the satellite operator, since Unibap is not a processor by default. On the Remote Access service the customer must retrieve its data before the term ends, after which Unibap wipes the hardware. Confidentiality obligations are unlimited in time and survive termination, and the customer must comply with applicable export-control and sanctions law.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The site declares no hosting country or region for customer data, and that silence is structural rather than an omission: the product processes data on board the spacecraft, under the operator's own control. The privacy policy covers only personal data gathered through the website and the business relationship. It foresees transfers outside the European Economic Area and names Taiwan, Israel, Argentina, Uruguay and the United States as countries that may be involved — a transfer clause, not a statement of where anything is hosted. Security measures described are intrusion-protected networks with firewalls, password protection to industry standards, possible encryption in transit, and confidentiality undertakings binding employees and suppliers. For the Remote Access service the hardware sits with Unibap in Sweden and is wiped at the end of the term. The agreement is governed by Swedish substantive law, with disputes settled by arbitration under the SCC Arbitration Institute in Stockholm.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Unibap Space Solutions.
- Dual use is explicit: the site markets a Defense & Military segment and names orders from the Swedish FMV, the Danish Ministry of Defence and Korean and Italian defence contractors. Onboard image analysis can serve intelligence and targeting purposes.
- Surveillance reach: the missions listed include Arctic maritime surveillance and ISR work. Generating real-time insight from orbit raises proportionality and privacy questions that no page on the site addresses.
- Export dependency: delivery hinges on EU and US export licences, and the terms state that a refused or delayed licence is not a breach — a real geopolitical exposure for any buyer.
- Supply-chain concentration on AMD, Hailo and Intel Movidius silicon; a shortage would translate directly into availability risk.
- Legal documents are out of step with the company: the privacy policy is dated 2018 and names "Unibap AB (publ.)", while the current name was registered on 26/05/2025.
- Entity-versus-product tension: the legal person was registered on 07/03/2013 as a shelf company called AB Arapten 4808, later renamed Bruhnspace Advanced Projects AB and then Unibap AB, so the registration date precedes the space business itself.
- Automation trust: a pipeline that returns insights instead of raw imagery moves the decision into an onboard model whose source data the ground operator no longer sees, and nothing on the site describes whether customer data may train models or how to opt out.
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
High. This is integrated into a spacecraft, not opened in a browser: it involves mechanical, thermal and electrical integration, interface selection and a qualification campaign. The vendor mitigates that deliberately — SCOS is built on Ubuntu, the containerised framework isolates the application, and the stated aim is that a team without space experience can develop for it. The recommended path is to develop on an Application Development System, verify on an engineering model and only then fly. Introduction seminars, remote support hours and full SCOS manuals come with the higher service levels, and LOOM installs from .deb packages.
Integrations
Behind Unibap Space Solutions
Fundraising
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What does Unibap Space Solutions actually sell?
How much does it cost?
Is there a free trial or a free plan?
Can the platform be tested before buying?
What kind of AI runs on board?
Do developers need prior space experience?
Is there a public API?
Which orbits are supported?
What certifications does the company hold?
Where is customer data hosted?
Should you pick Unibap Space Solutions?
Unibap Space Solutions is one of the rare entries in an AI directory whose claims can be checked against orbital flight logs rather than a marketing page. Hardware has been in space since 2016, the iX5 alone has passed a thousand cumulative days across five missions, and the named partners — NASA, ESA, Moog, Argotec, D-Orbit, Loft Orbital, KSAT, Thales Alenia Space — are verifiable counterparties rather than logos of convenience. The AI here is functional, not decorative: onboard inference is the whole point of the product, and the accelerators, frameworks and pre-processing pipeline exist to serve it.
The offer is unusually complete for its size: three flight computers, an operating system, a hyperspectral pre-processing pipeline, a cybersecurity suite, and a genuine developer path that lets an outside team build on ground hardware before committing to a launch. More than forty third-party applications have already been verified in orbit, which is the clearest evidence that the open-platform promise is more than a slogan.
Two reservations deserve stating. The first is commercial opacity: nothing is priced, nothing is self-service, and every path leads to a quotation — defensible for flight hardware, but it leaves a buyer unable to size the engagement without a sales conversation. The second is documentary drift: the privacy policy still dates from 2018 and names a company that has since been renamed, and a retired product page survives in the sitemap. Neither affects the technology, but both suggest legal and web housekeeping lagging behind a fast-moving product line. The company itself is active and listed, and reported a loss on revenue of around 131 MSEK for 2025 — a scale-up profile, not a mature one. This is a tool for satellite operators, defence programmes, payload integrators and space-software vendors, and for no one else.
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