Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched that field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings the same long view to satellites.

For New Space Tracker she covers the ground where spacecraft and software meet: how satellites are built and operated, how constellations are flown, how imagery and radio signals become products, and where machine learning is actually doing work on orbit and on the ground, as opposed to where it is mentioned in a pitch deck.

Her stories start with the source, whether that is a filing, a technical paper or a mission update, and the source is linked so you can hold a claim up against it. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat and by demonstrations that only work in the press release. She applies the same standard at Quantum Zeitgeist, where she covers machine learning inside quantum machines. At New Space Tracker she owns the satellite manufacturing, earth observation, communications, ground segment and space telescopes desks.