detour

detour

On-board AI agents autonomously saving satellites from orbital debris @ treehacks 2026

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Detour is an autonomous collision-avoidance system designed to run on-board satellites using NVIDIA's Nemotron LLM on the ASUS Ascent GX10. It utilizes a multi-agent LangGraph pipeline to detect debris threats, assess risk, plan maneuvers, validate safety constraints, and execute avoidance burns locally with zero ground-station latency. The system consists of key components such as Agent Pipeline, Physics Engine, Satellite Model, Tool Wrappers, API, Frontend, and Ascent GX10 Setup. The tool aims to provide fast and autonomous decision-making capabilities to prevent collisions in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) by leveraging edge AI technology.

README:

Detour — On-Board AI Agents Saving Satellites from Orbital Debris

TreeHacks 2026 | NVIDIA Edge AI Track — Honourable Mention Winner

Devpost https://devpost.com/software/detour-64kpds?ref_content=user-portfolio&ref_feature=in_progress

Detour is an autonomous collision-avoidance system that runs on-board a satellite using NVIDIA's Nemotron LLM on the ASUS Ascent GX10 (Grace Blackwell). A multi-agent LangGraph pipeline detects debris threats, assesses risk, plans maneuvers, validates safety constraints, and executes avoidance burns — all locally with zero ground-station latency.

Architecture

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    ASUS Ascent GX10 (On-Board)                   │
│                                                                  │
│  ┌─────────┐  ┌──────────┐  ┌──────────┐  ┌────────┐  ┌──────┐ │
│  │  SCOUT  │→ │ ANALYST  │→ │ PLANNER  │→ │ SAFETY │→ │ OPS  │ │
│  │ scan &  │  │ risk &   │  │ maneuver │  │ verify │  │BRIEF │ │
│  │ triage  │  │ refine   │  │ design   │  │& exec  │  │      │ │
│  └─────────┘  └──────────┘  └──────────┘  └────────┘  └──────┘ │
│       ↕             ↕             ↕             ↕               │
│  ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐   │
│  │              Physics Engine (deterministic)               │   │
│  │  screening · risk · CW dynamics · RK4 · SGP4 · Chan Pc   │   │
│  └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘   │
│       ↕                                                         │
│  ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐   │
│  │          Satellite Model (fuel, power, dynamics)          │   │
│  └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘   │
│       ↕                                                         │
│  ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐   │
│  │  Nemotron 3 Nano 30B (NVFP4) via vLLM — local inference  │   │
│  └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘   │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Key Components

Component Path Description
Agent Pipeline agents/ LangGraph 5-agent pipeline with tool-calling
Physics Engine engine/ RK4 solver, J2 perturbation, CW dynamics, Chan collision probability
Satellite Model engine/models/active_satellite.py Full orbital dynamics with resource management (fuel, power, battery)
Tool Wrappers agents/tools.py 11 LangChain tools wrapping the physics engine
API api/ FastAPI server with agent, catalog, conjunction, and satellite endpoints
Frontend frontend/ Next.js + React Three Fiber 3D globe with live satellite tracking
Ascent GX10 Setup scripts/setup_gx10.sh One-command setup for the ASUS Ascent GX10

Agent Pipeline

Agent Role Tools
Scout Scan catalog for upcoming conjunctions, triage by severity scan_conjunctions, scan_demo_conjunctions
Analyst Deep risk assessment — Chan probability, high-fidelity TCA refinement assess_risk, refine_conjunction, propagate_orbit
Planner Design avoidance maneuvers considering satellite resources propose_avoidance_maneuvers, simulate_maneuver, get_satellite_status, check_maneuver_feasibility
Safety Validate constraints, approve or reject, execute approved burns check_maneuver_constraints, get_satellite_status, check_maneuver_feasibility, execute_maneuver_on_satellite
Ops Brief Generate human-readable summary for operators (synthesis only)

Quick Start

1. Backend

python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
uvicorn api.app:app --reload --port 8000

2. Frontend

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev  # localhost:3000

3. Agent System (with Ascent GX10)

# Start Nemotron on the Ascent GX10
chmod +x scripts/setup_gx10.sh
./scripts/setup_gx10.sh

# Run agent pipeline
python -m agents.run "Scan for conjunction threats to satellite 25544 in the next 48 hours" --demo

4. Agent System (without GPU — dev mode)

# Set OPENAI fallback in .env
NEMOTRON_BASE_URL=https://api.openai.com/v1
NEMOTRON_API_KEY=sk-...
NEMOTRON_MODEL=gpt-4o-mini

python -m agents.run "Scan for threats" --demo

Model

nvidia/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Nano-30B-A3B-NVFP4 — 4-bit quantized (NVFP4) for fast edge inference on the Ascent GX10. ~15GB model weight footprint, leaving ample memory for KV cache and concurrent requests on the 128GB unified memory Grace Blackwell SoC.

Served locally via NGC vLLM container with tool-calling (--enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser hermes --enable-chunked-prefill).

Why Edge AI?

Ground Station On-Board (Detour)
5-15 min communication delay < 1 sec decision
Limited pass windows 24/7 monitoring
Single point of failure Autonomous operation
Manual operator in the loop Agent-validated decisions

In LEO, a debris collision can happen in minutes. You can't wait for the next ground station pass.

Team

  • Justyna — Frontend, 3D Visualization, UI/UX
  • Ethan — ASUS Ascent GX10 Setup, Simulation Logic
  • Adit — Satellite Data Feed, Simulation Logic
  • Keanu — Ascent GX10 vLLM Setup, LangChain NVIDIA Nemotron Agent System

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