A cubesat called PRETTY operated by the European Space Agency executed a voice command from the ground and launched the 1993 video game Doom in orbit, marking the first demonstration of orbital voice control.
Radio amateurs from the Oslo Group of the Norwegian Radio Relay League made the breakthrough after six failed attempts between April and July. On July 27, Jon Bergli Heier (call sign LB9BJ) spoke the command "PRETTY play Doom Doom Doom" from a rooftop in Oslo. The satellite received the transmission, transcribed it using onboard voice recognition, and started the game.
The effort took 59 days and about 775 dollars, including pizza. Early attempts failed because the satellite's receiver channel was too wide to pick up the voice signal clearly. Engineers narrowed the channel after analyzing a raw recording from July 3 that showed the spoken words were unrecognizable due to Doppler shift and an antenna not designed to relay voices to space.
PRETTY generated a report showing gameplay footage, a transcription of the command, and signal diagnostics. The satellite transmitted the recording of the operator's voice back to Earth.
Tanagra Space, an Estonian company, supplied the voice-recognition software. The team used open-source tools including GNU Radio for signal processing and Sherpa-ONNX for speech recognition.
The application extends beyond gaming. Tanagra Space stated that a satellite could someday use transcription and AI to interpret distress calls like "mayday" or "help" from remote areas and alert rescue services. The technology could also help future spacecraft detect deep-space radio signals and send relevant data to operators after onboard AI analysis.