On February 28, 2014, the world's first art satellite, ARTSAT1: INVADER was launched as a piggyback payload of the H-IIA F23 launch vehicle. INVADER, a 10 cm cube 1U-CubeSat with a mass of 1.85 kg and equipped with Morikawa, a mission on-board computer (OBC) compatible with Arduino (more info), continued its steady operation on orbit, successfully completed an array of artistic missions by commands from the main ground station at Tama Art University in Tokyo. These artistic missions included algorithmic generation and transmission of synthesized voice, music, and poems; capturing and transmitting of image data; and communicating with the ground through a chatbot program.

Following the surge of personalization in the field of computers, networks and the recently much-hyped digital fabrication, the field of satellites and spacecrafts are also undergoing the same transformation, as nano satellites such as CubeSat become more widespread. Just as computer art and internet art were born out of an era of media personalization, we are now about to witness the unfolding of an art engendered by the personalization of satellites.